


The End of Days

by Go_get_Jakes_gun



Series: The End of Days [2]
Category: Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ableist Language, According to the Aesir anyways, Anal Sex, Anger, Attempted Forced Abortion, But most of them believe in her right to rule, But they're half-Vanir so it's acceptable, Cannibalism, Dark Thor, Flogging, Forced Incest, Gang Rape, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Gore, Hate, Hela brings everyone back, Hela is Hela, Homophobic Language, I mean it, Incest, Including the Warriors Three, Infanticide, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Intersex Loki, It gets very very very very bad before it gets ok, Jealousy, King Thor, Legitimacy Questions, Lust, Male Lactation, Mpreg, Perceived Betrayal, Poor Loki, Pregnancy, Public Humiliation, Queen Hela, Rape, Sadism, Sex Toys, Sexual Torture, They're all scared of her, This is an awful horrible fic, This is really dark, Vaginal Sex, Valkyrie FTW, Violence, War, Whipping, cliches, heat - Freeform, so much rape, this is seriously gonna be long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:07:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 34
Words: 47,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go_get_Jakes_gun/pseuds/Go_get_Jakes_gun
Summary: Hela had cast a spell on Thor, it seems. One that makes him go back for her after depositing the Asgardians back on Asgard (which Surtur didn't completely destroy, in this AU). Loki pays the price.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Sif (Marvel), Frigga | Freyja/Odin (Marvel), Hela/Loki/Thor (Marvel), Loki (Marvel)/Original Male Character(s), Loki/Thor, Thor/Hela
Series: The End of Days [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553131
Comments: 142
Kudos: 164





	1. Chapter 1

It had been two months since Thor had brought Hela back. Loki shivered.

They’d provided him with a room. Of course they had, he was their _toy_ , they didn’t want to break him too early on. It was small, nothing compared to his old, princely rooms.

He thought that it was a joke how quickly the people of Asgard had forgotten about the horrors and the devastation brought about by Hela’s prior stint on Asgard.

_Forgot them or are in fear of them_ , he reminded himself. Asgardians were many things: brutes, bastards, bumbling idiots- but they weren’t **_stupid_** , and they didn’t forget. Just like how he was absolutely certain that in their minds, despite whatever seidr Hela had worked, they hadn’t forgotten that they still had a second Odinson who could save them from the first.

A second Odinson who _would_ save them from the first, he promised himself. Even as his heat approached and he grew increasingly suicidal by the day.

They wouldn’t take him during it. At least not in the cunt. Right? It was the only way that they could impregnate him… well, maybe not the _only_ way, given how Thor was a fertility god, but it was the one that he feared the most- take him when he was barely conscious, when he couldn’t fight back. Not that he could fight back anyways, of course, but the point still stood.

.

Hela languished on her and Thor’s royal bed as Thor made sweet love to her, using his thick, meaty cock to fill her insides as he thrust rhythmically (but not brutally) and fondled her tits while he kissed her. She was on her back, her legs behind his head, so that he could also easily reach down and play with her clit when he wanted to. Mmm, yes, good sex-slave-husband, her father had raised a fine young man indeed.

As Thor finished his bit, bringing a hand down to rub her off, she let out a sigh of contentment.

“I love you, my queen.”

“And I you, my king.”

.

Loki awoke clutching his sheets to himself. Oh no.


	2. Chapter 2

Hela sent over half the guard to help him through his heat. She had sauntered in that morning dressed in a maroon robe (Thor’s colour, what a show-off), smirked, disappeared, and came back with a little black object that looked vaguely like a buttplug. She placed it inside his slick pussy.

“I’ve instructed the guards that should any of them remove this, I will slaughter the lot of them. It’s a more… base form of contraception, if you will. You’re so lucky that Thor wasn’t the one to wake you up.”

And that’s how the men found him, grinding down onto a toy that simply refused to penetrate him for some odd reason. As the first one moved to take his place in Loki’s arse, Loki _finally_ realised that the damned thing was enchanted so that some rubber part of it extended and acted in the same manner as whoever was fucking him, a mould of their penis, if you would.

Another man came for his mouth, another moved to join the man in his hole, beginning to stretch him with the thick fingers of a hardened warrior. He moaned at the feeling of two _real_ dicks pumping his arse with their iron, and their consequence of two artificial, rubber dicks moving in the same manner within his cunt. Finally, after several minutes, in which two men moved so that his hands would stroke their hard dicks, one man moved under him, to his front. Hela said not to remove the black object, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t play with what was above it. The man completely ignored his penis- most men on Asgard did, he had learnt in the two months since Hela had turned him into Asgard’s sex-toy, they preferred to think of him as a female. The guard reached down and pinched at his throbbing clit, pinching hard enough at the ripe little bud to make him scream around some old man’s cock.

This continued for the five days of his heat. On the last day, it was Thor who came to see him.

“I see that you are doing alright now that your affliction is over.” That was another thing. Thor now called Loki’s heat, which he had prior to Hela’s appearance never known about, an ‘affliction’, and Loki had to admit, that in many ways it was. It was, by and large, his greatest fear, after all. “I’ve come bearing fruits and water, don’t want you getting fat,” Thor smirked, walking behind Loki. “Hela told me to take the plug out of you… but you’re so loose here,” he shoved two fingers into Loki’s open, wet, arsehole. “Mmm, I see those men pumped you full, Loki. Mind if I add another load?” Did it even matter? Since when did Loki have autonomy anymore?

Thor placed his cock at Loki’s hole. Loki barely even felt it.

.

“The people haven’t been well since Odin’s death,” Hela commented one morning at breakfast, which she and Thor shared.

“What do you suggest that we do about it?” Thor munched on his pork sausage. “Their morale is low because we’ve spent the past few months rebuilding, and we will likely be doing so for many more.”

“A royal birth,” Hela said, suddenly. “A new baby, a new heir, a child of Asgard’s golden son.”

Thor frowned. “Already? You want me to breed the Jotun bitch?”

“We’ll have to wait until his next heat, brother… but yes, when the time comes, you must breed him. It is the only thing that will cure our peoples’ ongoing depression.”

“Aye, my love.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: kink shaming (for those of you who are into period!kink, I am so sorry! :( I just can’t imagine Loki being into it); also incredibly dodgy, fantastical!racist details (but lbh, we all low-key stereotype Hela like this)

Loki grew antsy as the days passed. It would be Hela’s time of the month soon. Whenever she was on it, it was Loki’s sole duty to deal with his brother’s insatiable lust. Loki loathed day that he just somehow _knew_ she’d force him to eat her out during her period. Eurgh, the thought revolted him!

His own blood-shed lasted three days after his heat. It was the best three days imaginable- no Thor and Hela. He thought, distantly, that there was a time when there was more to be happy about than that.

Nevertheless, Hela’s lasted six days, and she would be cranky through all of it as she always had mild cramps the first two days, and felt bloated the remaining four.

He hid himself in the library. As Royal Pet, he was allowed into: Hela and Thor’s chambers by invitation; the library; the courtyard; the gym; the kitchens; the throne room by invitation; and the dining hall, also by invitation. His own room too, of course, that went without saying. And the bathrooms.

He was, however, barred from all else, and that included his mother’s gardens, which had managed to withstand Surtur’s fire. Nor was he allowed in his father’s study, which was now a cloakroom. 

The pair had made a mockery of Hliðskjálf. Loki loathed them all the more for it.

.

Thor supervised the rebuilding of Asgard. Sif, Hogun, Fandral and Volstagg still stood with him. He was grateful for their aid in rebuilding Asgard. He promised them that soon Asgard would be prosperous once more, that they would regain their sense of pride.

It was an idea that had excited everyone. Expanding their empire past the Nine, going forth and finding ten, eleven, even twelve- conquering _Jotunheimr_! His reign would be one to remember, Hela would make sure of that.

.

Hela’s period was upon them. The entire week she spent, barking orders out to whoever was unfortunate to be in the same general area as her.

Thor was fortunate, he supposed, that his wife was open to him sleeping with their thrall during these times.

He let out a satisfied sigh as he pulled out of Loki’s arse, letting his cum drip down, out of his hole. He slapped the already red arse one more time, leaving the man with the puffy hole to wallow in the mess they’d made, and closing the door behind him with a sharp thud.

Loki hated this. He supposed it helped, having his brother so cold and detached, so _not_ Thor… but in a way, almost, Loki would rather have _his_ Thor back. As though the rape would be bearable if and only if Thor still…

No, he couldn’t let himself think of such. Thor _did_ still love him, _somewhere_! Thor _didn’t_ think that he was worthless. Thor was just under Hela’s spell, and Loki would do all that was in his power to break it!

It was why, when alone, Loki insisted on calling Thor ‘brother’, despite the man’s laughs. It was why he was so obedient to Thor, why he was always so gentle and careful with his movements towards his older brother. He knew, deep down, that he could break this curse. Free Thor, free himself, free the people of Asgard from their hellish new queen. He could _do this_.

.

Asgard would take at least a half century to rebuild, Hela groused, they didn’t _have_ a half century. Once word got out that Asgard was defenceless, there’d be attacks nightly. That left only one option.

They _needed_ to invade Jotunheimr. Jotunns were good builders. If they could defeat them (and with Thor’s aid, and the Casket, she knew full-well that they could [ ** _easily_** ]) then they could enslave them and have _them_ rebuild Asgard. In time, with a bit of selective breeding, they would be able to wipe off the Jotunn race, leaving the Aesir stronger than ever. After all, wasn’t her father an example of that? And weren’t she and Thor perfect examples of what happened when you weaned off the Jotunn and left behind mostly Asgardian? And a bit of Vanir, she supposed, but they could sort that out in time.

They would need a strategy. She would need to see Thor and their Council by nightfall to share this new plan with them. If all went well, they could commence before the close of the next month.


	4. Chapter 4

The good thing about his heat cycle, Loki supposed, was that he only had one heat cycle per year and a half. His last one had been two months ago, so he was good for another sixteen months. That meant sixteen months free to plot how to break Thor out of this madness. He didn’t think about himself. No, that would be foolish. If he were to break free, there wasn’t a nook or cranny in the universe where his brother wouldn’t find him within _days_. Save for Sakaar, of course, that had taken weeks on Loki’s end though days on Thor’s.

Sakaar was _not_ an option. No. He’d heard Korg whisper that the Grandmaster was back. No doubt the man would remember Loki’s betrayal, Loki doubted that even sex could save him this time. Knowhere? No, Taneleer would simply throw him back once Thor arrived. And he had no doubt in his mind that Thor would look for him. Hela wanted him as the vessel for Thor’s child, after all, and what Hela wanted she got.

In the library he’d done some research on love spells. Nothing useful there. Whatever Hela had done to Thor was primordial. Except that he hadn’t seen Amora in forever, and definitely not since Hela had poisoned Thor.

“Pet,” Thor’s voice rumbled.

_Oh no_ , Loki thought _, here we go again_.

.

Thor liked Hela’s idea to invade Jotunheimr. As did his father’s War Council. Well, the old version of it anyways. Hela had restored order to the often chaotic court by sacking the newbies and putting back people like Gunnar and Forkay in charge.

As always whenever he watched his wife talk about something that she was passionate about, he grew horny. Usually he’d make sweet, sweet love to her, but it was her moontime, and Loki would have to suffice.

He _loved_ his wife, but Loki… Loki he could just dispassionately rut into, Loki was _nothing_ to him, and it honestly did help him destress at times to just hold him down and fuck him. _And_ Thor didn’t have to be gentle.

“Pet,” he called into the library. No need to disturb the other readers, Loki knew better than to ignore him, wherever the man was.

And sure enough, there came Loki, walking hesitantly towards him. So adorable, he couldn’t wait to rip into him.

The moment that they were in Loki’s room, Thor shoved his left hand- which he’d quickly spat on- down Loki’s pants, wasting no time as he fingered the man in the arse while removing his breeches with his right hand. His strong left arm held the god to him as he writhed in Thor’s hold. Thor shoved him down the moment that his pants pooled at his legs. “Open it up and suck,” he commanded.

Loki did just that, with infuriatingly slow hands. Loki did this a lot. Did he think that Thor liked it or something? Thor rolled his eyes, bored. Seriously, how could _anybody_ be this slow on the uptake? Thor was rough and quick for a _reason_. Loki was a quickie he could finish in and get backto work. He was a snack, Hela was Thor’s one and only meal. And what a meal she was.

Thor pulled back, roughly pulled Loki up, spun him around, pressed him to the wall, and shoved into the hole that he’d sort-of-prepared earlier. Loki’s howl was like music to his ears. He kept pushing in, more and more, rut fuck fuck.

Thor pulsed and came. He let Loki go and left the room, it was almost dinner and Hela would be upset if he were late.

.

Hela was dressed in a stunning green and black dress, her hair pushed to one side in a long ponytail. Her eyes glimmered in the chandelier light. She was breathtaking, and she was _all Thor’s_.

Thor took a bite out of his chicken leg, eyes locked on her as she took a gulp of red wine.

“Why the fancy dress, wife?”

Hela grinned at him. “I can’t look nice for my husband?”

“You can, but you usually have some ulterior motive.”

“None tonight, husband. War has been declared against Jotunheimr, I’m merely in a celebratorial mood.”

Thor grunted. “When shall we begin our attack?”

“I’d recommend we start in the summer. It would be better if we begun the conquering in warmer months, because it would be easier on our troops to make the initial breach, and because Jotnar are weaker in the summer.”

Thor nodded. “I see… good plan. Summer is in eight months, though.”

“I know, I know. Our people will grow restless, but it will be worth the wait. For now we will simply have to focus on the reconstruction of the bare necessities, and training new soldiers for the battle to come.”

“Aye,” Thor tipped back his ale. “We should do something to lift spirits. Hold a feast or something.”

Hela nodded. “What we need is a scapegoat. Somebody to blame for all of this.”

“It was _Loki’s_ fault. He was the one to crown Surtur.”

“You would throw your own brother under the bus?” Hela tutted, but she had a proud look in her eyes. “Alas, t’would be a bad idea. We need him to birth your heir, and the people will not take kindly to a villain’s spawn sitting upon the throne of Asgard.”

“Then whom would _you_ suggest, if not for that cowardly snake?”

Hela thought for a moment. “How about Tyr?”

“Our brother?”

“Yes. He would only have been a competitor for the throne, and he has been inspiring dissidence amongst our followers. How would they feel to have their _hero_ exposed as the one who put them in this miserable state?”

“Clever, clever,” Thor grinned.

He pushed his chair out and stood up. “I would have you now?”

Hela huffed out a sigh. “Thor, I am on my period.”

“There are other ways to please and be pleased, my lady,” he grinned, moving her dress’s cup out of the way and fondling her sweet, porcelain tit. He pressed a kiss to Hela’s lips.

.

They laid in bed together, Thor carding his hand through Hela’s sweet ebony hair.

“Why can’t you be the mother of my child?” He murmured.

Hela shrugged. “I have no interest in the birthing process. And besides, any child of ours would be a child of incest, we are related. The child would be born with deformities.”

“And what about the Jotun scum whom you have picked as your surrogate? Surely you realise that the child will be 3/4 Jotun.”

“He is unrelated to us, but still revered as a prince of Asgard. And besides, a child born of his and your magicks is a child to fear.”

“The laws of man do not apply to us. We are _gods_.” He hummed, pressing a kiss to her neck. “Our DNA is pure, our child would not suffer the same afflictions as that of a mortal man’s.”

She just shook her head. “I have no desire to be pregnant, Thor. And besides, what would the point be in keeping Loki alive if _I_ were our child’s bearer? Plus, pregnancy changes your body, and I have no desire to change _this_ body.” She grinned at him. Loathe as he was to admit it, Thor would probably not have her change a thing about herself either.


	5. Chapter 5

Loki needed to find a way to get out, he knew it. He’d known it since Thor married Hela. If it weren’t for his ‘sister’s’ good grace, he wouldn’t be alive right now.

Something that she’d done to him had made him go _dark_ , he loathed Loki’s existence, at times when he fucked Loki he would fuck him to the point of near-death (if the marks on his neck, and the broken bones and the blood were anything to go by). Whoever Thor was was gone now, replaced by this shell of a person reinforced with hate and anger.

The hardest part was, of course, finding allies. On the three-week anniversary of Thor and Hela’s marriage, he’d made the mistake of trusting a prison guard and had wound up naked, kneeling in front of Hela’s throne, being whipped by Thor. Loki had seen a fire in Thor’s eyes that night. That was how he knew that the man wanted him dead.

He stared at the drapery over his bed. Thor had wanted him to sleep on the floor at their feet, Hela had insisted that he get his own room. It went on and on like this, Thor would want Loki kept naked and Hela would insist on giving him clothes; Thor would want Loki emaciated, Hela would order him be given food; Thor wanted one of the guards to knock Loki up on his heat, Hela gave him that weird black plug, etc.

It was a mind game, he thought to himself. She had her own ulterior motives for him, they barely ever spoke to him, he wasn’t a dinner guest of theirs by any stretch of the imagination, but he had _some_ clue as to what she wanted, he was _Loki_ after all. Thor and Hela had been married for close to a year now, Thor was a _fertility god_ , and yet the pair had no child. Loki was notorious for his fertility, he’d birthed Sleipnir for crying out loud!

The second time that he’d tried to escape, Hela had convinced Thor to give him out to the guards instead of killing him, like Thor had wanted. He could still feel both escape attempts. When he stretched he could feel the not-yet-fully-healed scars lining his back ‘ _Two more decades_ ,’ Eir had told him. And as for the guards… well, he wasn’t quite sure what he currently felt was _them_ , per say, given that he’d had many more after.

He wasn’t going to kill himself. Aside from self-preservation, Hela was the Goddess of Death, she’d undoubtedly find him in Helheimr. No, the only way to escape her grasp in death would be to make it to the shiny halls of Valhalla, but after all he’d done he doubted that even his own father would let him into the kingdom of gold.

He had this one plan, where he tied a bunch of linen together and escaped out of a window. Another where he crawled into the ceilings and waited for them to forget about him. But those would never work. Unfortunately, wherever he went, it seemed that Thor and Hela would find him, and that he would forever be living on his ‘sister’s’ mercy whilst in this abhorrent loop.

The only way to escape would be to free Thor of this spell so that they could fight Hela together: orchestrate a second Ragnarok. It was why he spent so much of his time in the library. There had to be _something_ that Hela had missed. And when he found it, he’d be safe, and everything could go back to normal.

He sat up. Time to go and do some good old reading.

.

Thor and Hela made it a habit to make public appearances at least twice a week. It was to keep up morale, Hela said, in this dark and desperate time.

Hela was dressed in her usual black and green leathers, her cape trailing behind her on their chariot. Thor was dressed in his navy and rust-colours, as was now usual. They were more complimentary to his wife. In all honesty, he was thinking of forgoing this colour-scheme altogether and simply donning black and purple. Wouldn’t that suit him more, after all? And then he and Hela would match on the black, the perfect power couple.

.

Loki was called into their rooms once more when Hela’s period was over. As Thor’s cock slid in and out of her cunt, Loki licked at her folds, sucking on her clit, and being shoved face-first into her cunt by his angry brother.

Honestly, he didn’t understand why Hela provoked Thor like this. It was clear that she liked having the upper-hand over him, she was, after all, a megalomaniac, but it was so blatantly clear that Thor _hated_ having Loki in bed with them, that he was disgusted by it. Surely even she realised that it was pointless to put them in bed together.

She probably gained some sick satisfaction from it, watching Thor reject Loki in such a way. After all, had Odin not imprisoned her in Helheimr, she would have grown up with Thor (and corrupted him just as she is doing now).

_No_ , he had to remind himself. _It was just a spell, it was just a spell. Thor had a heart of gold, he was_ ** _Thor_** _, the spell would break, it had to, it had to…_

As soon as Hela came, she usually waved him away. Not this time, however. Instead, she used those deceptively strong arms of hers to haul him up. OK, OK, not entirely unpredictable, at times she would make Thor and Loki be intimate for her own pleasure. She dragged his head down, her ring digging into his skull, and drew him into a kiss.

OK. Unpredictable. This was not good. Hela pressed him further and further down into her face, she shoved her tongue into his mouth, and he had to fight the urge to sink his teeth down onto it.

He could hear Thor growling in the background. Of course. This was to piss Thor off, she was simply using him, she’d have had her fill soon. He felt another hand on his head, it gripped his hair tightly, and he was certain that he was going to come out of this partially bald. One moment he felt a pull, and the next a brief blank feeling followed by searing hot pain on his scalp. It was only then that he realised that he was on the cold, tiled floor, and that his arm felt rather sore.

“Get out,” Thor ordered. Loki took the minimum time needed to force himself onto his feet and leave the room. He needed out, he needed out, he needed out.


	6. Chapter 6

Loki had a bruise on his head for the rest of the week. He walked carefully in order to avoid Thor.

He couldn’t access his seidr, that was the main problem. Hela had placed manacles over his wrists the moment that Thor had brought her back. When he’d tried to get out of them, she’d slapped her hand across his face and laughed (she sometimes did that).

Loki cursed outwardly. Oh no, oh no, oh no. This was the worst possible time to be a woman. Curse her gender-fluidity!

.

Loki was required to spend a minimum of ten hours a week in the sunlight. She was always led there by guards, namely the Warriors Three and Sif. Hela trusted no others with her.

Loki sat in Frigga’s Gardens. Where once there were beautiful, exotic flowers of every colour of the rainbow… Hela had burned it all down the moment she’d arrived on Asgard. Even Surtr’s embers hadn’t been enough to _singe_ it, and yet _Hela_ managed to burn it to soot in the span of a half an hour. Once Hela was gone, she would be sure to restore her mother’s lovely garden.

Hela had been Frigga’s daughter too, she knew that much about her. Around about when Frigga and Odin were newlyweds. Thor was born later in their marriage, around their 2,000,000th anniversary, when they were still pretty young, but not _that_ young. Hela, by contrast, had been born within the first year. Her birth the final seal on a political contract between Vanaheim and Asgard.

Vanheim… that was still a safe place. If she could get there… then uncle Vé would most certainly send him back. There was no way that she could expect her uncle- _foster_ uncle- to fight Hela and Thor for some Jotun stowaway.

She picked at a small root by her foot. _Tenderlily,_ one of his mother’s favourites. She didn’t have her seidr on him anymore, but… she chanced a glance to his left and to his right. The four people guarding her were huddled in a corner chatting about something or the other. Figures, they knew that without her seidr she was weak (though it seemed that they underestimated her cunning). She shoved the root into his pocket, as well as some soil. She’d make her mother proud.

.

A royal visitor was coming, an attempt at forging an alliance. A pathetic attempt at implying that Asgard _wasn’t_ going to dominate whatever deals it got.

Princess Aleia and Prince Argus from Attleheimr were sent as representatives. Clearly the old king hadn’t quite gotten the memo about Thor and Hela’s relationship. Both were dressed ornately, but Aleia’s top was just a _liiiiittle_ too plunge-y if you stared hard enough. Plus, there was detail on that plunge, which definitely drew attention to what she assumed were some beautifully sculpted breasts (‘ _Like Sigyn’s_ ,’ she thought, miserably).

Loki herself had been forced into a rather revealing dress. Hela dictated it the moment that she saw Loki’s female form. It was a glittery green halter neck with a _deep_ plunge, exposing the little cleavage that she had (‘ _Easy access to her breasts,’ Hela had smirked)_. She looked like a whore. She looked like she was a prostitute so desperate that she paid _you_ for the sex. She hated it.

It was a royal visit, so Thor and Hela kept her close. _Their little pet_. She was forced to accompany Hela everywhere, almost as though Hela was taking her around by a lead. She hated the way that Prince Argus leered at her. His eyes followed every swish of her skirt, he kept them trained on her breasts whenever they stopped somewhere for any longer than a minute. It was appalling.

And she felt terrible for Princess Aleia. She was so young, and here she was, being tossed at Thor by her father like a lamb to the wolves. Loki was grumpy throughout dinner, despite that she hadn’t eaten at this table since back before everything, before she found out that she was a Frost Giant, before _Hela_ was a thing in her life.

She sat on Hela’s right in a tight-fitting halter neckdress that had _wayyyy_ too much underboob, Thor sat on Hela’s left (it put Hela on his right, where a queen was meant to be seated). Across the table from them sat Princess Aleia and Prince Argus.

“So, Aleia, I’ve noticed you eyeing my brother,” Hela drawled, dunking her bread in the gravy. Aleia gulped, blushing and spluttering out apologies, clearly having no clue that Hela would either notice or take mind of her actions. Hela held up a hand to silence her. “Relax, I take no offense,” **_lies_** , “I understand, my _husband_ is a being crafted by the Norns himself, I mean, look at him.” She turned her gaze to Thor, and raked a hand up one of Thor’s big, _big_ biceps. Loki hated that in this form Thor’s body made her salivate (more than was usual) at the sight of her brother. Hela turned her piercing gaze to Argus next. “And you, Argus. I’ve noticed the way that you look at Loki, and who could blame you? Look at her,” without notice, Loki found herself in Hela’s lap. “My little sister is… quite the catch,” bitch please, like Loki couldn’t sense Thor’s glare into her. He hated this. “Though I must wonder if you are aware of her… affliction?”

“M-my lady?” Poor thing, he was so afraid that Loki actually felt _bad_ for him. He and his sister were caught in Hela’s trap now, she pulled the strings. She _always_ pulled the strings.

“See, my blessed sister is, in fact, adopted. From Jotunheimr. As a result she… has both male and female reproductive organs,” Hela grabbed Loki’s legs from in front of her and forced them apart, flipping up the front of Loki’s dress and exposing her genitals (Hela didn’t let her wear lingerie unless it was _all_ that she was wearing). Hela took Loki’s cock in her hand. “Mmmm,” she smirked at Aleia and Argus’s horrified looks. “In our family, we are… _close_.” She began pumping Loki. Loki begun to squirm in her place on Hela’s lap. Hela, however, continued talking. “We believe that intimacy _strengthens_ our bonds as a family… wouldn’t you agree so, Argus?”

But Argus was quiet, his eyes stoic with unshed tears. Loki could tell that the pair had caught on to Hela’s true intentions. How could they ever be so naive as to think that Hela would ever forgive anyone for anything? “Please don’t do this,” he finally begged.

Hela just smirked. “Go on ahead, Argus,” her voice left no room for argument. “Come on. Show us how much you _love_ your sister.”

Reluctantly, Argus pulled Aleia into a kiss. Loki was close. Hela leaned in. “Oh, Loki. Are you aroused by this? I’m sure that our _lovely guests_ would be **_happy_** to give you a show. Argus: take off your sister’s dress.” What hope had they? None had power greater than Hela. Argus begrudgingly removed the garment from his sister’s body. “Oh, look at _her_ titties, Loki,” Hela used her free hand’s nails to rip through the thin strap that held the cloth over Loki’s chest together, exposing her breasts. Loki came, staining Hela’s dinner plate. Smirking into Loki’s neck, she lifted a cum-soaked hand up to Loki’s mouth. Loki licked it obediently. She looked up, abruptly at the brother and sister across from her, who had stopped their doings and who looked very, _very_ terrified. “Who said that you could stop? Lower her panties and fuck her.”

“My Queen!” The tears flooded Prince Argus’s face, and Loki felt true sympathy for him.

“Silence! You will do as she says!” Thor roared, crushing any chance of rebellion. Frightened, Aleiapulled off her own panties.

“Lay her on the table, and give us a show!” Hela commanded.

Argus obeyed. He lifted so that her bum was on the edge of the table, and begun to finger her. Hela’s hands roved Loki’s own tits, kissing up and down Loki’s long, pale, column of neck. As soon as Argus (gently) pressed Aleia down, taking his place between her legs, and looking at Hela pleadingly, Hela moved one hand down to Loki’s female genitalia and the other to Loki’s neck. So it was to be like this then. While she’d never done it in her female form, Hela had done similar things in Loki’s male form. “Go on, now.” Argus pushed in and Hela started squeezing Loki’s neck. Her hand moved against Loki’s clit like a vibrator. Loki jerked immediately at the sudden stimulation. Hela squeezed tighter. “Pick up the pace,” Hela ordered.

Aleia cried out in pain, and Argus cried out in agony as he was forced to rape his sister (was that true if they were both being raped by Hela?) Usually, a god could hold their breath for a good thirty minutes, but Hela had this effect on her. Her vision was already starting to blur. Her loins were on fire. Hela stilled her hand, then pinched Loki’s clit between her index and middle fingers, rubbing at them _hard_. With a yelp, Loki came, squirting her slick on top of the cum on top of Hela’s plate. Her thighs trembled as Hela laughed, but Hela’s grip didn’t let up. By instinct, Loki’s hands came up to the one around her neck. By the time that Argus had cum in Aleia, Loki had blacked out.


	7. Chapter 7

When Loki came to, she was in her bed. Thor must have carried her, she was too heavy for Hela, and the Queen didn’t let the guards touch her in this body. Not because she was a woman or anything, merely because this skin was a novelty to Hela and she wasn’t done playing with it yet.

She didn’t ask about Argus and Aleia, nor did she see them after that, but the trade negotiation had been set. From what she’d caught, the deal was for Asgard to receive 11 tonnes of gold and wheat per year, and Asgard to offer its protection in return. Yup, sounded like a deal that Hela would broker.

.

The Tenderlily was seven centimetres tall. Loki smiled. She’d done her mother proud. In two to three months the flower would bloom, and she’d be on the receiving end of its beautiful, beautiful fragrance. A tear fell down Loki’s face, and before she knew it, she was on the floor, crying.

She missed her parents- missed her _family_! She wanted it back, she wanted it _all_ back! She wanted Odin’s mindgames back: they kept both her and Thor as well as Asgard safe! She missed seidr lessons with her mother, as well as hair lessons whenever Loki was in her female form. She missed hunting with her brother, laughing with her brother, partying with her brother…

_Tricking her brother. Stabbing her brother. Making her brother and her mother and her father all_ **_hate_ ** _her…_

She wanted it back. She wished she’d never tried to disrupt Thor’s bloody coronation. She wished that she’d never encouraged Thor to challenge Laufey. She wished- she wished she hadn’t gone to the vault and… and taken the Casket and _forced_ Odin, her father who loved her despite her not being of his blood, to tell her about her birth parents. About her monstrous heritage. She curled up on the floor and hugged herself. She’d had it all, back then, she just hadn’t known it. She’d confused Odin’s concern for Asgard with his disappointment in her, and now a bruised neck and a thoroughly raped vagina and arsehole were the price that she paid for it.

“I-I’m sorry, mödir, I’m sorry fäder…” she sobbed, “and I am so, so, _so_ sorry to you, Thor. I am so sorry that I couldn’t protect you from this.”

.

Loki decided that her day would best be spent in the library searching for that text she needed. As she walked, she bumped into a figure. Before she knew what was happening she was backhanded across the face and left sprawled on the floor.

“Don’t you ever!” Thor kicked her in the stomach. “ _Ever_ , touch my wife again!” He kicked Loki again, and left her on the ground as he stormed off.

.

Hela’s interest in Loki’s form wore out the minute that she realised that Loki didn’t get periods once every three months like she herself did.

Loki took a ragged breath, her eyes covered by a blindfold, her limbs tied to four different corners of a wooden bench, her body on full display to whoever was there.

“Dig in,” was all Hela said, before there were hands in her cunt, her arsehole, her mouth, fondling her breasts, playing with her cock…

Blindfolds always made everything so much worse.

.

Loki was ecstatic to be a he again. He was quite tired of Hela sharking him and then letting strangers grope his tits. Plus, as a male, the clothes were less revealing, and he was more comfortable in them.

He’d been through nearly every book in the damned library. _Nothing_!

.

Hela decided to celebrate Loki’s manliness by having Thor fuck him up the arse while she masturbated to it. Thor’s hand smushed his face into the mattress, he could barely breathe from the force of it all. Somehow his body found it arousing enough to leak fluids from his cunt all over the mattress. Once Thor was done, Hela had him switch their sheets.

As he opened the chest at the foot of their bed to get new sheets, his eyes drifted to Hela’s bedside shelf. More books… he stalled picking up the new sheets. They were speaking to him… they must be enriched with seidr. _Those_ must be the books he needed to break Thor’s spell. Of course! He was giving Hela too little credit! She’d grown up in the castle, she’d know exactly how impressive the library was, she never would have allowed Loki to go in there if the cure to Thor’s curse was in there. He needed a way to get those books. He picked up the sheet. He could plan this more elaborately in his room.

He threw the sheet over the bed and then started walking around it to smoothen it and tuck it in. As he bent over to start tucking the sheet, Hela shoved her entire fist into his cunt. He gasped, leg kicking up a bit. “Oh, my apologies brother. I forgot all about this,” she forced his leg up and placed her mouth on it. She’d never done this before. Almost a full year of this (It was a full year in 2 weeks), and she’d never once placed her mouth on him (granted she didn’t often **_touch_** him, and she tended to neglect his cunt).

Thor was going to kill him. Thor was going to tear open his stomach, rip out his entrails and strangle him with them. Or at least that was what Thor’s expression read, as Loki’s knee landed on the bed and Hela clutched his thighs. He put his hands in front of him to brace himself. Hela showed no signs of stopping. She latched onto his clit and sucked and sucked and sucked as she fisted him. He came shortly after.

She chuckled as she withdrew, face wet with his fluids, and he stood back up. “You may take your leave,” her voice wasdeceptively sweet. She knew what she had done, what she was doing. If he weren’t on the receiving end he might even admire her for it.

He left the room, a mixture of his fluids, Thor’s cum, and Hela’s saliva dripping down his legs and leaving a trail down the hall as he made his way to his bedroom.

.

As could be predicted, the next time that Thor saw Loki, he bashed him into a wall, and then fucked him in the arse against a closet.

“Remember your place, you argr!” Thor spat, “Beneath us all, on the ground, like the dirty scum of a Jotun you are! You are not worth the Queen’s touch!”

He wound up leaving his brother on the floor, bruised and dirty in a heap. Loki was then tied to a horse and made to follow it, naked, while a guardsman took his rounds to ensure the kingdom’s safety. By the time he got back, his feet were _killing him_ , and he had even **_more_** bruises from all of the times that he had fallen down.

Sometimes, Loki didn’t understand this game of theirs. They wanted him to birth their heir, that was apparent, but they treated him like trash and degraded him in front of all of Asgard. Did they expect the people to love a child born of his loins when said child’s mother was, to all of Asgard’s knowledge, a dirty, debased slut? How was the babe going to have any decent political standing if this was how the people saw its mother?

The joke was on them though. One of the first things that Frigga had taught Loki, when his heats had kicked in, was how to brew a decent contraceptive using nought more than eggs and copper, and he had an abundance of those whenever he please. He would never catch, he _refused_ to catch. He was _not_ having a child under these circumstances, nuh uh, no way. It was bad enough that poor Sleipnir had to be born from rape, he had been lucky that his father had taken Sleipnir in, his baby boy could have been forced to work in construction or something, or killed for meat, the possibilities were endless.

Sleipnir had been released to Vanaheim, to roam the lands with his father, as soon as Loki dethroned Odin. Hela and Thor had no idea where his son was, so it wasn’t like they could hurt him. Not like they’d hurt Sigyn, that had been Loki’s fault too. He’d been foolish, in the earlier days of this madness.

He still dreamt about it sometimes. He hadn’t seen Sigyn since the night that Hela had ordered an entire battalion to rape her, and then made Loki lick their semen from her entrance. She’d done it to demoralise him, he knew, as she’d caught them in an embrace together just the day before. For an entire three months, it had worked like a charm. Loki didn’t know if Hela had had her executed or something, though he doubted execution as she likely would have made it a public affair and branded Sigyn a traitor to Asgard.

Sigyn was beautiful, he remembered. She had brown hair and beautiful, _beautiful_ blue eyes. Her smile lit up a room… they had dated for a month prior to Thor’s coronation, after a lifetime spent admiring her, and had remained somewhat intimate after Hela and Thor’s wedding until they were caught. Loki had told her that it was a bad idea, but she insisted, and who was he to say no to _her_? Under different circumstances, he liked to think that the two of them could have eventually gone and gotten married. Had a few children, lived life in Asgard City’s suburbs.

But she was no more. Even though he had no evidence that she was dead, it was better to think of her as. For if she were alive, who knows what cruel punishment Hela would be conducting on her? As he’d said many a time before, Hela didn’t _do_ forgiveness. She was a cold, heartless, salty bitch- there, he said it!

.

With the war against Jotunheim due to start in three months, Thor was out training every single day, and Hela was in meetings with warlords. This was it, this was his chance.

Loki crept into Hela and Thor’s private chambers and grabbed the first book in the pile. He flipped through it quickly, his eyes skimming the pages and- ah hah, _bingo!_

**_Dauð hjarta:_ **

_Penetrates the victim’s heart. Can only be administered to a person who is trusting towards the seidrfólk. Unleashes the heart’s wickedest desires, to be warped by the seidrfólk controlling them, causing a deep obsession-based-intimacy with the one who has bound them by the spell. There is no evidence that this spell is real, except for a folktale from 1233424052394852340 BC about a shepherd and a seamstress. However, in the event that it_ **_is_ ** _real, the story suggests that-_

And then it was blank. There was nothing, the part had been cut out. Loki didn’t even know that you could do that to seidr books…

He heard a slam behind him and froze. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Hela. He turned to find her standing in front of the closed door. “Looking for something? _This_ , perhaps?” In her right hand she held the cutout. And then, just like that, she set it aflame. All of Loki’s hope died right before his eyes. “Pity, brother. I never expected you to be so careless, I thought you to be the smart one among us… what a tragedy this is,” and then Loki was on his back on the floor with Hela looming on top of him.

“You know,” she continued, “you and I have been getting quite handsy of late.” really? _He’d_ been getting handsy? More like Hela had been more rape-y than usual! She untied the knot above his pants. Oh no, what was she doing? Usually she rubbed his dick through his pants, was she perhaps going to fist his cunt again? What would the point of that even be without Thor around? “I don’t think your big brother likes that very much.” Ah hah! So his speculation over her motivations for the recent increased physical contact were accurate! “You know, Thor is **_very_** possessive over me,” go figure, “I wonder how he’ll feel knowing that you fucked me.” Wait.

**_WHAT_**!?

He started struggling. He knew that he it was useless from past attempts, but he had to give it his all. There was no way that this could happen. Thor would **_literally_** kill him, and then Hela would bring him back to use in her schemes, and Thor would go straight ahead and kill him again. With his bare hands, even! And besides, he did **_not_** want to fuck Hela, licking her was bad enough!

“Mmmm,” she pulled the pants at the hips to loosen them a little, then brought them ever so slightly down. “I don’t imagine he’ll be very happy,” she took his dick in her hand. “In fact… he’d probably castrate you for this.” **_No_**!

“No! No! Please, no! Please! Please, don’t do this!” He’d never cried that hard in his life, not even when they made him watch all of those guards taking Sigyn. “Please, stop! I’m sorry! Please!” Hela merely chuckled, and leaned forward.

“I’d silence you, but I _love_ listening to you scream,” she took his cock in her palm and begun to stroke it. “You went behind our backs, you’ve practiced _seidr_. Ergi aren’t men, you don’t need this, just accept it.” Hiscock involuntary began to stiffen. Damned biological responses. “Thor will be back soon, imagine his face when I present him with a pussy full of _your_ cum.” Loki could imagine that, and its what kept him struggling.

““No! No! Please, no! Please! Please, don’t do this!” He babbled it like a mantra. ““No! No! Please, no! Please! Please, don’t do this! Please, Hela, please, **_no_** , please, **_no, NO!_** ”

“What is going on in here?” Thor asked, walking into the room. He walked in on the sight of the Jotun on the floor with his cock out, and his wife fingering her vagina and stroking the thing’s cock. He saw red.

Loki didn’t have the room to gulp as Thor lifted him by the throat and smashed him to the floor. Then, for the first time since this whole nightmare had started, Thor sent wave after wave after wave of pure electricity through Loki. Loki’s nerves were lit alight, he didn’t even know if he was screaming or not. Probably not, he couldn’t feel anything after a few seconds so he highly doubted that he was capable of opening his mouth.

.

When Loki came to he had cuts and bruises and stitches, and was covered from head to toes in healing stones. He still couldn’t feel his face.

Later, he would realise that Thor had, after electrocuting him (he only stopped because Hela made him), smashed him through the glass piece at the foot of Hela and Thor’s bed, the bit that connected from the frame to the ceiling.

He didn’t see Thor again for a week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the saddest bit was that there wasn't even a cure on that sheet, it was just the instructions for casting the spell. The cure for that sheet was located in a secret tome held by Frigga's fosterwitches, but more on that later ;)
> 
> Also, please don't hate on me making Hela Frigga's kid. There's nothing in the MCU that I can find that fully rules her out of it, just saying. Plus, Odin was OLD when he had Thor, and Frigga wasn't too far behind him. I doubt that they got married shortly before Thor's birth, since usually women in royal families got married pretty young (thereby also implying that its unlikely that Frigga was Odin's second wife, because she doesn't look that much younger than him, and women were typically married off to men who were quite a bit older than the women they were marrying). Therefore, unless they just went 'no kids' for who knows how long, which would be a bad idea to secure Odin's succession, I can somewhat deduce that Hela (might possibly be) is also one of Frigga's children.
> 
> Again, this is speculation. It's not like we were told that much about her heritage, other than that Odin's her dad too. You'll see why my speculative biography of her is important later on!


	8. Chapter 8

Thor went on a campaign to Vanaheim and Musspelheim a month later. Vanaheim was Asgard’s ally, Musspelheim would just want war against the Jotnar. They hated the Frost Giants with a passion.

That left Loki without the crazy one, only the calculating one.

The Tenderlily was about 22 centimetres tall now. It’d bloom in a week or so, and Loki couldn’t wait. Just looking at it made him feel as though his mother, Frigga, was in the room with him. It was a deep, fulfilling feeling. She’d be proud of him for growing a plant from near-death, he knew it.

.

The Tenderlily bloomed that Friday. _How fitting_ , Loki thought. The beautiful thing about a Tenderlily, aside from its smell of pineapples, cinnamon and vanilla, was its colour scheme, or rather its _multi_ colourscheme. The moment it bloomed it flashed blue, then white, then pink, then orange, then turquoise, before finally settling on a deep, royal purple. He smiled at it. He had his outdoor time today, but until then, the Tenderlily would have to stay in his dresser. It was his little secret, his little sign of rebellion. Only his.

.

When he came back, Hela was in his room, holding the lily. _Fuck_! He watched her twist the stalk of it, now uprooted, in those accursed, sharp nails of hers. She smirked at him. “Well, well… what do we have here? Tenderlily…” Loki’s eyes flashed with a mix between amusement and confusion. How did she know what it was? “Don’t be so surprised, brother. You forget that I am our mother’s first born… I got her her first one, you know? Her first Tenderlily, her favourite flower,” he felt sick. “Goblin’s sapphire, they call it. _Betrayal_ , I call it. _Treasonous_ ,” her smirk was like that of a hyena’s right before it ate you. “Usually, I would have Thor enforce discipline upon you… unfortunately, he is gone for now, so I must be the one to do all of the heavy lifting. _Guards_!”

A big group of burly men flooded the room. Another gang rape, so be it. He was numb to them at this point. Hela needed to pick a new type of punishment, honestly.

But instead, they dragged him out of his room, into the throne room, which was full of people. They ripped his clothes off of him and tied his arms and legs before forcing him into a kneeling position. Then Hela appeared behind him (he could feel her), and he heard a crack. Oh no, she had a whip! She’d never personally whipped him, he was terrified.

“Ladies and gentlemen and those who are both and neither, Loki Laufeyson stands here accused of treason!” Gasps throughout the court. “He has smuggled in an illegal substance with which to poison Thor and I,” lies, but he got that she needed to portray him as a villain, it would help her campaign if there was another royal for the people to hate. “For this, he must be punished.”

The pain Loki felt across his skin was reminiscent of being electrocuted by Thor. Hela didn’t stop there. She continued her assault on him as the people cheered her on. His back, his ass, his neck, his arms, his _cunt_! It was especially painful there as in addition to it being a more sensitive region, it went between his lips, and he wouldn’t be surprised to see bleeding there, because it felt as though she had pulled skin off.

Then, when she had had her fill, she roughly kicked him so that he was on his side and whipped him some more on the flanks, then shoved him more and kept her boot on his throat, crushing his windpipe. The people were loving this. Hela knew now what she was doing. Even in the event that he managed to escape, he’d never be able to convince the people of Asgard to follow him in a coup, not when they had seen him debased in such a fashion. This lady was a genius.

She whipped him more now. Whipped Over his chest, his face a bit, his cock and balls, and his armpits.

When it was all said and done, Hela had him in that dog position once more. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” she rumbled. He felt something shove into his arse. It was smooth and long. With a sinking feeling, he knew exactly what it was. He turned his head to see just a portion of the Tenderlily peeking back at him, its colour now blue. People laughed at him. “A gift,” she announced to the crowd, “from my mother’s garden. A flower he seemed quite fond of. Since he seems to like nature so much, why not finish this off with some fruits? Let us see how much this freak’s cunt can take?” Oh no.

The first fruit to go in was an apple. Hela shoved it up _far_ into his cunt, until it was floating around in his womb, like a babe waiting to be born. Then, without removing the apple, to the cheers and jeers of the people of Asgard, she put in a banana. She made a show of fucking him with it, until he was gasping and involuntarily pushing back. “Take it, you slut,” she whispered in his here. “Take it, imagine its Thor fucking you. That’s right, you dirty slut. I know deep down, regardless of what you admit, you’ve always wanted big brother fucking into your dirty little cunt. Well that’s too bad, he’s _mine_ now,” she said this with a vengeance. Then she rammed the banana deep up into his cunt. People were laughing at his plight. Hela would be bound to make those who laughed hardest her Lords and Ladies. Oh well, at least it was over now.

He felt something _huge_ stretching his netherlips. What? He felt it pricking at his walls, probably tearing them if they weren’t torn already. Panting for air, he glanced back. Oh no, no, no, no, _no_! There was no fucking way that Hela was going to fit a pineapple into his cunt. His cunt was already smaller than a normal woman’s, add in the fact that there were already two fruits occupying it, and it just couldn’t _possibly_ work!

_You once took a horse_.

Yeah, in a mare’s form!

“C’mon, little Loki,” she chuckled maniacally. “Take it like a good little slut. How are you supposed to birth _Thor’s heir_ , if you can’t even handle a pineapple?” And then she forcefully shoved it in. He howled. It hurt so much, his body couldn’t handle it, his vagina was on fire! He didn’t realise that he was still screaming until Hela slapped him across the face. He needed them out, he needed all of them out! It felt like he needed to pee or take a shit or both! His cunt muscles clenched and unclenched around the fruits, trying to force them out, but it seemed that Hela had placed a spell or something on them. “One final touch,” she smirked, pulling out a rose, and sticking it at the front, right against his clit. He screamed and screamed and screamed at the burn. Only the lower half of the stalk had had its thorns removed, there were a bunch right up against his clit, tearing tissue. He couldn’t take it anymore, all of the contents of his bladder came pouring out, flooding the floor beneath him. Hela withdrew, laughing. She addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, Loki Laufeyson, ex-prince of Asgard, resident crown slut.” The humiliation that all of this brought him probably hurt the most of all.

As the common folk dispersed, Hela turned to him. “Don’t even think of taking those out. I’ve enchanted them to stay on for at least a week, or until Thor returns, whichever comes last. I think he deserves to see this, he will derive great amusement from it. I don’t think you’ll be able to wear clothes, bloated as you are,” his stomach was distended, oh _Norns_ , “So you’ll roam around naked… hmmm… and I think I’ll leave your arms bound, though you may have your legs.” She ripped those ties with her nails in one clean swipe. “Take care.”

Getting up again was a struggle. It took him a good hour. It was hard enough with his cunt stuffed,and wasn’t helped much by having his hands tied. Multiple times he fell directly on the pineapple, causing the thorns and spikes and fruits in him to push against him and cause him more pain and sensitivity. Eventually though, he managed. Then, there was the struggle of walking. He had to walk as though he were bow-legged and pray that he didn’t slip. That took another hour, as his room was far away from the throne room. He made it to his room and collapsed on the bed. Unfortunately, he did so on his stomach, which he quickly moved to his back because he could feel the apple pressing against his abdomen and it made the skin between his womb and the mattress ache.

He broke down, sobbing hideously. He’d tried, _so hard_. He’d wanted to revive Frigga’s legacy, the mother whom he’d let down time and time again. No, that wasn’t true, she wasn’t his mother. Weren’t those his last words to her? And now look, he was wearing her favourite flower in his arse! He was a failure of a son! Urgh! He was going to _kill_ Hela for this, for everything, but mostly for this! How dare she even _mention_ Frigga’s name in a public address- she had no damned bloody right! No wonder Frigga had let her be locked away, even Frigga knew that that monster was not worth saving, damnit!

He let his rage consume him, and he spent a good three hours simply stewing on the bed and staring at the ceiling. Dammit, he was getting out, he was freeing Thor, and **_he_** was going to be the one to kill Hela, dammit. For their mother and for their father. Who cared if she was the Goddess of Death? She was going to die. Even if he couldn’t physically kill her, there were other ways to get rid of a god. He could mince her and scatter her remains across the Nine, let’s see her reform from that! _Ha_!

.

It took Thor a month to get back. Fuck him.

True to Hela’s word, he was indeed amused by the sight of Loki stuffed before him. Hela told him of what Loki had done, and let him pick the fruits out.

“Tenderlily, mother’s favourite,” he hummed, removing the flower first. He then went for the rose. It pierced Loki’s clit, sure, but Norns be damned, at least it was finally over! He eyed the pineapple, smirked, and held Loki down, before using it to fuck him. Loki cried at the stretch and the burn. Eventually, he withdrew it. The apple and the banana had turned to mush, and so Loki was sent to Eir for an ablution and some healing.

.

What Loki liked about Eir, was that she was an old member of the royal household. One look in her eyes and he _knew_ that she was on his side. She washed the remains of the fruit from his cunt and placed a healing stone in there to fix him up. She sent him on his way, telling him to stay out of trouble, and to keep the stone in his cunt for at least a day. Easier said than done, but he accepted nonetheless.

.

“We are to go to war in two month’s time, my Queen. Are you not excited?” Thor lovingly kissed his wife’s cheek, his stubble tickling it ever so slightly.

“Yes, but… if something happens, you have no heir.”

“Nothing will happen. And besides, we have the Goddess of _Death_ on our side!”

“Hmmm, yes, but… I think it is time that you get Loki pregnant.”

“That runt? Now?”

“Yes, now. Just as insurance.”

Thor chuckled. “Will it please you, my lady?”

“Very much so, yes.”

“Why?”

“It will keep the people happy, and ensure that a royal remains on Asgard while we fight. And besides, by the time that the war is over, we shall have a baby to return to. Our family will be complete.” Hela had been clear on her desire for only one child.

“Hmmm, alright, my beloved. But how am I to get him pregnant? His heat is months away.”

“Leave that to me.”


	9. Chapter 9

Hela called him into her rooms that night. He walked in, legs shaking. Partially from all the things that were stuffed up in his cunt justtwo days prior, but also because she scared him. Thor was there too, this didn’t bode well.

“Ah, Loki, welcome, welcome.” A sudden smell hit him. It smelled of frost and cherries and fresh mint. “Oh, that’s just this, have a sip.” He didn’t want anything that she was offering him, but he knew that it would be useless to refuse her. Hela didn’t take ‘no' for an answer. He drank down the sweet, red liquid and felt a tingling sensation wash over him. “Now come, join us on the bed.” Okkk…

He moved to the bed, but his movements felt a little sloppy. Against his will, he lay there for a few moments panting, trying to catch his breath. What was in that drink? Poison? What would be the point in that? Drugs? Why? Hela and Thor could just force him to have sex with him, Norns knew his consent had never been an issue for them in the past, so what was it?

He felt a slickness between his thighs and a sudden uncontrollable craving for cock. Wait, _oh no_! He was in heat! How was this possible, his heat wasn’t due for another half a year! One glance at Hela and he knew that she had planned this.

“Take him, Thor,” Hela gestured. Thor grumbled, unhappily. “Come now. Take his cunt and knock him up, Thor!” Hela glared at him. Not wanting to anger his wife further, Thor complied. He put in two thick fingers and scissored Loki for a moment, before withdrawing and shoving his cock in. His very, **_very_** big cock in.

Thor had never fucked him in the cunt. The only person he ever fucked there was Hela, because she was the only woman for him. And it felt so, so _good_! His heat racing through him, he craved his brother’s thick member battering into his womb. Moments later, Thor came, and Loki panted, coming down from his high. Thor pulled out the moment that he was done, swiftly.

Gruffly, Thor looked at Hela as Loki took a short nap. “Am I done yet?

“Not until the week is over or his heat ends. Whichever one comes first.”

.

Loki woke up tucked into Hela and Thor’s bed. Wait, why was he here? He was never allowed to stay… his heat was over. His eyes widened and he jumped up, quickly remaking the bed. Oh no, oh no, oh no! He needed to act quickly! He needed to get the ingredients for the contraception potion!

It worked within a week of conception, but who knew when he’d conceived!? He ran to the kitchen and asked for the eggs. He took the copper from a penny coin. He brewed them in a pot. He poured it in a cup and brought it to his mouth, where it was promptly ripped out of his hands.., by Hela.

A hand struck his face. “Look, Thor,” Hela cackled, chucking the cup in Loki's face, splattering him in the thick, reddish goop. It was humiliating. “He’s ungrateful for the gift you gave him.” She sauntered out of the room, before looking at him with a look in heroes that sent shivers down his spine. “I guess we’ll have to make sure he doesn’t harm our heir manually. Thor, restrain him.”

“With pleasure, my queen.”

.

Loki spent the first month of his pregnancy tied to his own bed by chains. He couldn’t move, except for once a day when someone would take him out on a walk. Usually it was Mikael, sometimes Bor (a name made popular by his adoptive grandfather).

He quite curiously hadn’t seen the Warriors Three or Sif in a while, then he mentally facepalmed. of course, they were preparing for a war, they couldn't afford to have Asgard’s best taking him out on walks.

The only way at this stage to not have the child would be to have a full-on abortion, and he’d need to either leave the palace for that or get creative. Getting creative would surely kill him, and he couldn’t leave the palace, and thus he was trapped where he was.

An odd thing had begun to happen too, Loki thought. It could have been just a coincidence… the first time, but twice when he awoke he had caught a large figure whom he could only assume to be Thor staring at him from the door. That was weird, he usually only ever came near Loki if it was an accident or if Hela forced him to. Then again, Hela was probably forcing him to check on how Loki was doing. He was beginning to wonder if humiliating him in front Thor was what helped keep Thor under this fucking spell.

_The heart's wickedest desires_ … Well, in retrospect, he supposed that under all of his golden brother’s self-restraint, he _had_ probably always wanted to smack Loki upside the head. He’d been about to give Loki the beating of a lifetime right after their father passed. And with all of the pain Loki had caused him over their lifespan, Loki wasn’t all too surprised by the whole avoidance thing. He supposed he couldn’t really blame Thor for never wanting to see him again.

He rubbed his wrists when it was over. He supposed that there was no way out of this, he was going to be having Thor’s baby.

The only silver lining?

Like _Helheimr_ was he giving it up to Hela!

.

Hela had decided it best for the people not to know yet. “We have to wait for the third month,” she explained to Thor. “He may miscarry.”

“Then we kill him.”

“We can’t do that yet, Thor. We still need his womb.”

“And what after?”

“I don’t know… We could assert our dominion over Asgard, you know. Have him birth heirs for every family of nobility. They wouldn’t launch a coup if they were all tied to the royal family, with no claim to the throne."

“Ah.” Thor didn’t like that one bit. He didn’t care for the runt one bit, but that wasn’t going to happen, even if he had to fight with the most beautiful woman in the universe to ensure it. The runt was going to carry his heir and his heir only.

.

Loki was a month and a half along and already showing. Eir had told him, when he’d gone to his daily checkup (Hela was paranoid), that because he’d already had Sleipnir, his abdominal muscles had been stretched in a fashion that made this child show earlier on. They still wouldn’t know the sex for another three months. The sex of _his_ child. The little Lokidottir or Lokijarson.

He went to his bookshelf to pick up one of his parenting books, when all of a sudden he felt a presence behind him. It was a scary, yet comforting presence. He felt the figure lean up against him and place a large handon his belly. _Thor_.

The figure said nothing, merely stood there for what couldn’t have been more than five minutes, but what felt like days to Loki, before retreating.

That… that was odd.

.

There wasn’t much point spending _all_ his time in the library now that Hela had burned the cure for Thor’s affliction. Instead, Loki simply decided to continue reading parenting books while he watched soldiers train to go to war with Jotunheimr. Odd, wasn’t it, that they were going to battle Jotunheim and conquer it, and yet their future heir would be mostly Jotun?

According to the book, he was supposed to be eating mostly raw fish at this stage of his pregnancy… he’d look into that one.

.

Loki took off his sweat-drenched tunic and rifled through his drawers for some nice clean ones. He’d been out in the sun all day, and being pregnant didn’t help. He had no clue how he was supposed to take 10-11 more months of it.

The hand was on his stomach again, Thor leant in close, pressed up against his back. There was a mirror on top of his drawers that he looked at. Thor’s head was against his and his eyes were closed. He looked almost… peaceful. Panicked, Loki didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to risk Thor hitting him, and was convinced that if he moved Thor would snap out of his reverie and do exactly that.He elected to simply remain as he was, frozen like a block of ice, holding his breath in. He could go thirty minutes, surely Thor would leave by then.

Thor sniffed his hair. Loki jumped involuntarily. That ended it all. Thor left the room, leaving Loki alone and confused.

.

There were more incidents like this over the next few weeks. Thor would, at first, simply hold him and smell him, which was weird on its own. He then started rubbing his hand in a clockwise motion over Loki’s baby bump. It only progressed from there.

That lead them to tonight, where Thor was kissing up and down Loki’s neck while grinding against him (which wasn’t _new_ , but was still a fairly recent development).

“You look good like this,” he rumbled. Loki blinked, Thor had never spoken to him during these… sessions. He hadn’t even spoken to Loki since Hela’s return unless it was to threaten him or to convey Hela’s orders. Loki didn’t dare reply.

Then Thor’s hands moved north to rove over his chest. “W-what are you doing?” He said, finally, despite knowing that he had no real right to.

“Yes, what exactly are you doing?” Hela’s voice came from the door.

The pair spun to see a seething Hela, and Loki gulped, immediately knowing that he was going to be punished for this.

.

Hela noticed. Of course Hela noticed. Thor’s gaze seemed a little offduring dinners, he was unaccounted for for roughly 5 minutes each evening. Loki seemed more nervous than normal. She followed him once during the second week of this madness. Then again, then again.

At first she thought it was disobedient but harmless, then Thor started doing more and more intimate things. Then he _talked_ to the fucking runt and she lost it!

Fuck this! Fuck her plan! Fuck the Norns forsaken war!

**_She_** was going to be giving birth to Thor’s heir!


	10. Chapter 10

When Thor entered his and Hela’s joint chambers, he was surprised to find Hela was waiting for him in neglige. After she’d caught them, she’d left the room without a word. He knew better than to think that his wife had forgiven him, Hela didn’t do forgiveness.

“Thor,” she spread her legs, smiling at him innocently enough. “Come here and ravish your wife.”

“With pleasure,” he smiled back at her.

.

She couldn’t humiliate Loki at the moment, becausethe little snake had gone around flaunting his pregnancy, and Asgard had a strict policy against abusing pregnant women, even if the ‘woman’ in question was a lying, thieving, whore of a snake.

The only way to go about this was if Loki were to have a miscarriage, or elect to have an abortion. Well, his willingness wouldn’t really be all that necessary if he were to have an abortion. She could _easily_ drug him, have it carried out, and then kill the man who carried it out for ‘robbing her brother of his baby’.

This was a waiting game. She wanted the runt to _feel_ pain. She wanted it to be as gruesome as possible. There was a herb, fire essence, that would do exactly what she wanted: eliminate the Lokispawn _and_ cause him grievous amounts of internal bodily damage. Bodily damage that could then be fixed before he was carted around and made to birth heirs to each of the 20 noble families of Asgard. Yes, **_perfect_**!

Oh how she wanted to snatch the child from Loki’s womb herself, to kill it with her bare hands. But alas, seeing as how Thor reacted to Loki’s pregnancy, (loathe as she was to admit it) she feared angering her husband. She had not known it possible for Thor to go against her wishes, but clearly it was. Hmm… curious.

.

“Lover,” Hela announced at breakfast a week later (2 weeks until _Thor_ invaded Jotunheimr), “Lover, I am pregnant.”

Thor spat out his food. “What?”

“Yes,” she smiled at him, leaning over and stroking his arm.

“I thought that you didn’t want children!”

“I know, and I’ve been thinking about it… but I would hate to not have a child in all honesty.”

Thor beamed at her, a grin splitting his face. “Well, I am very happy that you changed your mind, my beloved. Now we shall have two princes, or a prince and princess… or even two princesses, really!” He babbled on excitedly ignorant of his wife’s scowl. They were _not_ having two children, they were having **_one_** , Odin’s grandchild through and through. The people be damned, this child of incest was taking the throne whether they wanted it or not!

“Well, I was thinking, since we’ve already got _our_ child, there really is no reason to force Loki through with this pregnancy…” Hela drawled.

That didn’t get the reaction she wanted. Thor looked at Hela like a madman. “He doesn’t want this pregnancy? Did he tell you that?” He barked. He never barked at her.

“Well…” she said, uncharacteristically nervous. What had she done? She was the Queen of Calculation, how had she messed this simple nudge up so badly? What was going on here?

He stood up abruptly, and stormed out of the room. She heard thunder crack around the castle.

_Very well, let his temper be the death of Loki_. She could always bring Loki back to life without the baby.

.

Thor broke the door to Loki’s room, startling him from his position on the bed. He marched over and yanked Loki by the hair. Loki knew the creepy-peace wasn’t going to last long.

“You want to abort the child!” Thor accused.

“What?” Loki gasped. Thor pulled harder.

“I knew it! You lying, tricking _monster_!” Thor roared. But aside from the hair-pulling, Thor wasn’t doing anything else, really. Not slapping him, not punching him. Of course, not even this wicked spell would be able to make Thor harm someone who was pregnant. “I don’t care if you wish for an abortion! You shall birth our child, the heir of Asgard, whether or not you wish it! I shall see to it that your external excursions are halted until the babe’s birth!”

He released Loki’s hair and exited the room.

Loki sat on his bed, panting and trying to regain his normal heartbeat pattern.

_Our_ child? What did Thor mean by that.

.

The fire essence was taking its sweet time arriving. Honestly, how long did it take an Einherjar to climb to the top of Asgard’s tallest mountain and back down again? And until then Thor _still_ snuck off to Loki’s room from time to time. _Urgh_ , it was driving her insane!

Tomorrow they were supposed to make Loki’s pregnancy _public_! What was she to do then!? Languish in his humiliation at the miscarriage coming his way, sure, but she’d really been hoping to do it on his big day. It would have been comical. She tried to get Thor to postpone the event, but the damned oaf was stubborn. She couldn’t believe that he was outright disobeying her in all of this. Oh well, she would make him pay for it later.

She watched the people file into the throne room, expecting a celebration of sorts. Screw this, she wasn’t going to let that pathetic little runt steal her glory. She was announcing her pregnancy **_today_**!

“Thor, I think its time that we let the people know that I am pregnant with your heir.”

“But beloved, I thought that you said we had to wait until the third month to tell people.”

“Bah, that is only with Jotnar. We Aesir women never miscarry, we are _gods_. It was incredibly risky with Loki, especially given that you two are not of the same species. In fact, it may be a good idea to wait an extra month for his.”

“I am sure that he will be fine! Don’t worry, Hela.”

After a while, everyone was settled in. “Welcome, friends!” Thor’s voice boomed across the hall. “As you all know, we are to go off to war in two week’s time!” There was a raucous applause then. “Yes, it is a delight! However, in the event that something shall happen to me, I am pleased to announce that the runt, ex-prince of Asgard, carries my heir within him!” Thor nudged Loki forwards to be inspected by all of Asgard as though he were some type of exotic species (which _technically_ …), his baby bump fairly prominent by this stage.

“And I too, carry his child!” Hela said, her voice loud. She stepped forwards. Her baby bump was non-existent for now, but the people rejoiced regardless. ' _His true heir,’_ Hela thought privately. Loki’s eyes widened at the revelation. ‘ _Yes, runt, be scared.’_

.

It suddenly all made sense. No wonder Thor had thought that he wanted an abortion, Hela had probably suggested that he get one. Whatever was going on here, he needed to get out stat. His child was in danger. He thought briefly of the food on his tray that morning. If he had had the stomach to eat it, would he have been poisoned?

The one visit that Thor had been forced to allow him had been his walks outside for sunlight. Sif and the Warriors Three were his escorts as per the norm. Except that they didn’t take him to the garden.

“Where are we going?” He frowned at Sif.

“Silence,” she hissed at him. She took hold of his arm tightly. “You will be quiet now, understood? Or I shall gag you with my boot.”

“Well, alright then…”

They led him down Frigga’s Garden and to a pond. “Brother, now!” Sif called.

A bright light enveloped them and then they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wish that I could add more, but it felt like it would be disjointed and weird if I did. See you tomorrow! ;)
> 
> Also, if anyone is wondering how Hela could be so cruel, its just how I picture her: boundary-less 🤷🏻♀️


	11. Chapter 11

When Loki came to, he was in a cold, small, damp room with dozens of people staring down at him. He gasped in shock and fear, and they quickly withdrew. His hands immediately went to his abdomen, and he let out a deep breath once he felt the bump.

“Make way!” A deep voice he hadn’t heard in a long, _long_ time called out through the crowd. He’d never been more grateful to hear Heimdall speak. The warrior made his way to Loki and knelt beside his prince. “My prince, forgive me for not reaching you sooner. Operating the Bifrost when I no longer have access to my sword or the tower is a very strenuous task that we needed to rush to get you to safety. We did not want to risk it, especially after you were impregnated. As you know, it is dangerous to use the bifrost when pregnant. Can you stand?”

“I think.” Loki relpied, he placed an arm under himself and heaved himself up. Good, overall he’d definitely ached worse than this. Who could ever forget that time that Kurse skewered him and he’d had to make his way back to Asgard with a hole in his stomach? Or all those times Thanos and Hela had individually devised punishments for him? Certainly not he.

“Come, my prince,” Heimdall offered him a hand with which to hoist himself up. Though there were parts of the Guardian’s tale that Loki strongly doubted, he had no true reason to distrust Heimdall. Heimdall was loyal to the crown, the _true_ crown, not Hela’s corrupted version of it. He was loyal to _Thor_ …Loki accepted the hand. “There is much that we must discuss.”

“Aye.”

.

“Where is the runt?” Hela turned to Thor, arms crossed over her chest.

“I do not know, beloved.” Thor frowned. “Doesn’t it usually go on a walk today?”

“Yes, but he was supposed to be back three hours ago… you don’t think he’s run away, do you?”

Thor thought… if that fucking runt had gone and gotten an abortion, after Thor had _expressly_ told it not to, then Thor was going to kill him, Hela be damned! “We’ll search around and see. Guards!”

.

After Heimdall was done briefing Loki about the situation, he turned to Loki. “You cannot stay here.”

“Why ever not?”

“We are starving, food is infrequently come upon. We do not have the resources that you need to give birth.” Heimdall looked down at the bump. “And besides, if she finds us we are all doomed. It is much more likely that you will be found out here than on your own. We do not know who to trust anymore, anybody could rat us out. You are carrying Thor’s heir within you. It will stir a civil war in Asgard, surely you realise that. This child is our key to defeating Hela.”

He hadn’t actually thought about that. How could he? He’d only found out that she too was pregnant _today!_

_“_ Where will I go? Anywhere I turn, spies of Hela’s will report me.”

“Not on Jotunheimr,” Heimdall’s voice was nought more than a breathed whisper. “Not on a land about to be at war with Asgard. You could hide out in the vast fields of nothingness, nobody would ever find you.”

Heimdall raised a good point, but still. “And if they do? They know me as the prince who tried to commit genocide against them.”

“But you are still Laufey’s son.”

“I highly doubt that that outweighs the whole ‘tried to kill them all’ bit.”

“Not all know about that. Odin took responsibility for it,” he confessed.

That startled Loki. “What? Why would he do that!?”

“Because you’re his _son_ … and because he thought you dead. He did mourn for you, you know, that time. He blamed himself for it, he blamed himself for a lot of things… it infuriated him to no end when you tried to take over Midgard, he thought you were turning into Hela.”

The words were comforting… but they were coming from the wrong mouth. Loki had forgiven his father for many things… but there were still some things that were sore spots in conversation. He decided to switch the topic back to their main discussion. “Surely you do not think that a _child_ is the answer to our woes- and even if he or she _is_ able to defeat Hela, think of how many centuries it will be before they are fully trained! Need I remind you that Thor was 1200 before he became an even _somewhat_ remarkable warrior.”

“I know.” Heimdall nodded. “But something is better than nothing… and if our people have to wait, then so be it. Waiting for something is better than never getting it, and we _need_ emancipation from Hela. Her reign is ruining the people of Asgard in ways which are hard to digest. Your father was right to fear her coming in to power.”

‘And me,’ Loki thought, bitterly. ‘That’s what you want to say, isn’t it? That he was right to not give her the throne, and likewise he was right to deny it me.’

“Very well. I shall sojourn in Jotunheimr, until this child is born. And what of its birth? What if I am unable to carry it out on my own?”

Heimdall looked grim. “If it comes to it, I will gladly give my life to ensure that Thor’s heir is born. Do not worry, my prince.”

.

Jotunheim was not as cold as he’d think it would be. Granted, it was summer now, and he’d been here in winter before (which also wasn’t that cold).

He roamed around, looking for a place to spend the night. Heimdall had broken off those seidr cuffs with his sword- his _new_ sword, not his usual one- and disposed of the metal. They didn’t know if Hela could track the metal or not, and decided that it was better to take the safe route.

He needed a temporary name for the child, he was sick of calling it an ‘it’. Bjarnshargler? Trisha? No, both were too gender-specific… how about Tree? Yes, that was gender-neutral enough. He and Tree needed a place to lay low, and he wasn’t finding many good ones. He’d also need a place where food was abundant.

He saw a forest coming up ahead of him… that would be a great place to hide! Abundant food, shelter, and most importantly: camouflage!

He begun his walk in.

.

There was no sign of Loki _anywhere_. ‘Curse him!’ Hela thought. How was she going to eradicate the threat to her child’s crown now? She turned to the guard beside her. “Go to the city brothels. Bring me Sigyn.”

“Aye, milady!”

.

Loki spent an entire three days walking through the forest before suddenly coming across a beautiful gulley. It had lovely banks he could take shelter on as well as a cave beside it. He used his seidr to search the area (Norns had he missed his seidr!). Nobody was present, that was great! He laid down by the bank and took a nap for the first time in days.

.

When Loki woke up, there was a lean man standing above him. He had blue skin and horns… a _Jotunn!_ Loki panicked and tried to back away, but the man (a runt) stopped him.

“What are you doing out here, Asgardian?” The man frowned at Loki. In hindsight, switching into his Jotunn form wouldn’t have been the worst idea… could he even walk between skins when he was pregnant? It hadn’t worked with Sleipnir, but he’d just assumed that that was because his normal womb wouldn’t have been big enough to carry his son.

“I-I am prince Loki of Asgard,” the man’s eyes narrowed. “I come in peace, to escape the wrath of my cruel sister.”

“Uh huh,” the man clearly didn’t believe him.

“She wishes to have my baby snatched from me and sold to Musspelheim in the hopes of gaininga political alliance with them. From there on she wishes to whore me out to different kings to solidify existing alliances,” he tried. This was all just speculation, but it would make for a compelling reason to run away. “I also come bearing news: Asgard is planning to attack Jotunheimr within two weeks’ time.” That got the man’s attention.

“Oh, then why would you come here then?” He growled.

“Because it is the last place that they would look for me, and the only place where Hela does not have eyes.”

The man frowned for a bit, before pointing at Loki’s stomach. “Whose the father. It can’t be a commoner, or she’d never expect Musspelheim to take it.”

“Fandral the Dashing, it would also keep Vanaheimr in check as he is a descendant from the north’s royal family.”

“Aye…” the Jotunn didn’t look convinced. “Well, I must take you to our kings.”

“Why?”

“You are an Asgardian on Jotunn soil-”

“A _refugee_!”

“All the more reason to take you to our kings. Refugee or not, you are _tresspassing_!”

OK, Loki was so done with this. He closed his eyes and opened them once more, smiling saccharinely at the man. “OK, alright,” he stood up. He moved his hand behind the man’s hand, seconds away from using seidr to wipe his memory, when the man caught his arm.

“Seidrmadr, huh?” He looked at him. Loki felt a sharp burning sensation in his hand forcing him to sink to his knees. He glanced at the affected hand in panic and found it blue, _Jotun_ blue. “Interesting… fine, mage. Since you are so stubborn, I won’t take you to the Kings **_yet_**. But know that the later they find out about you being here, especially if you are to be believed about this supposed war, the less likely they are to view you as a friend.”

He pulled Loki with him as he moved. “Where are we going?”

“To my hut.”

“Who are you?” The burning question.

The man grinned at him, feral in a way that made him flinch. “They call me Angrboda.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert,   
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> if you've ever read anything I've ever written (on this account), then you know that meeting Angrboda is NOT a good thing...


	12. Chapter 12

Angrboda’s hut was the size of a small room at the palace, Loki thought haughtily. But he supposed that it would suffice.

“I must depart, of course. I have to tell the Kings about Asgard’s planned invasion. I shall be back in three days.”

“Alright.” Like Loki cared.

.

“Have you heard? Loki has disappeared!” Alfred asked his cousin, Maurdy.

“And? Who needs that runt? He’s been a burden on the kingdom since his birth!”

“He’s pregnant with Thor’s heir!” Alfred reminded, offended.

“Oh please, that child will be born out of wedlock, and to a Jotunn no less. The same person responsible for Odin’s death, _need I remind_ ,” Maurdy rolled his eyes. “Thor’s wife, Queen Hela, is the one who carries his true heir.”

“She is his sister!”

“They are Vanir, it’s acceptable. And besides, we’re not Midgardians, the child won’t have any health defects.”

“So if your two children slept together, you would have no qualms with it?”

“Loki was raised as Thor’s brother, it’s not much better, now is it?”

The two argued back and forth over this. And across the planet, others were divided on their opinions too, as the people grew restless anticipating their war with the Jotnar. Nobody knew what would happen, nobody knew which way things were going to go.

Nobody could predict which way things are going to go.

.

Angrboda bowed before his kings, Helblindi and Byleistr. “Your majesties… it is just as Ragnar described it. Your brother has arrived on Jotunheim to seek shelter from his siblings.”

“Excellent. And you are certain that it is the Thorson he bears?”

“Absolutely. My ponds have never lied to me.”

Helblindi nodded. “Very well. See to it that he is well looked after. We can not take the baby until it is weaned, Jotnar react poorly to surrogate mother’s breast milk…”

“Aye. How shall I keep him around until then? He seems like a flight risk.”

“Do what you have to do. Make him feel comfortable… we shall launch a pseudo-attack on your hut in three month’s time, use it to show off your seidr. We’ll pay some people from Midgard to do it, they look more Asgardian, it’ll work better.”

“Clever…” Angrboda smirked. “Thank you, my liege.”

“No, no. Thank _you,_ Forest Witch.”

.

Hela picked at her nails, bored. Still no sign of Loki.

She couldn’t fight in the upcoming war either, because she was pregnant. Urgh, domestic life was _not_ for her! She ran a hand over her stomach, the bump was still practically non-existent, but this was her first pregnancy, Eir said she would likely not see it until the third or fourth month.

She clenched a fist. Thor was polishing Jarborn and getting ready to go off and conquer Jotunheim. Not that she minded ruling as an autocrat, but she preferred having Thor where she could control him. The spell might be solid, but it could still be broken. She didn’t know how, of course, because there had been no mention in any books she’d read. In all honesty, the bit she’d ripped out of the book that Loki had been reading had been an attempt at discouraging him, there hadn’t been an actual cure cited.

She took the excerpt from her breast pocket. The true excerpt, not the piece of scribble she’d burned for show.

_there is no cure. The shepherd followed the seamstress to the end of his days, and the only true end to his obsession with her was after death, when his corpse couldn’t follow her._

_The spell itself, though based and rooted in dark magic, is oddly simple. It involves some herbs, including sagelily and basilica, both of which are near-extinct. The incantation itself is rather obscure. In the folktale, only two lines are mentioned:_

_‘mennitone menndore menn’_

_And_

_‘Salliture, salliva, sall’_

_Both of which are from the long-extinct language of Gaethera, an old tongue reserved for seidrfólk._

She slipped the piece back into her chest. The actual book was quite useless when it came to this spell, but it had been where she’d learned about it, so sue her for being sentimental and keeping the drivel around. It was more of a history book, not very useful for practical seidr-craft.

She contemplated what to do now. She could walk around the citadel, show her face to the people, give them what they want: more access to the royals. She could have another meeting with her warlords. She could visit Sigyn and Narfi. She could work on her seidr.

Warlords it was!

.

When Angrboda came back three days later, as promised, Loki was awake and browsing through his books.

“Wow, snoop much?” he snorted.

“You’re a seidrmadr!” Loki accused.

“Yes.” Angrboda nodded. “Why?”

“You didn't tell me you were a seidrmadr!”

“You didn’t ask!”

“So!?”

“So? Why would I bring it up? I’m not one for bragging,” he shrugged. “I thought that it was fairly obvious that I was one when I recognised you as one. Clearly you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

You could call Loki a coward, call him a turncoat, call him a _monster_ \- but you did not, I repeat, **_not_** , call him stupid. **_Ever!_**

“I’ll have you know that I’ve faked my death on multiple occasions, and have brought down entire armies through with alone.”

“Right,” Angrboda rolled his eyes. “Which is how you came to be with…” he frowned, and pointed at Loki’s belly.

“Tree,” Loki supplied.

“Ah, gender-neutral, nice. Anyways, your _highness_ , I did not mean to offend,” how on earth could his statement have been construed as anything _but_ offensive!? “Would you like something to eat, or have you made a meal of my cupboard as well?”

He hated Angrboda.

.

As the days went by, and Loki grew more and more tired of Angrboda, his mind began to collapse on him. He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on much during his time under Hela, how could he? Each and every second was a battle for survival, he needed all of his attention focused on the present moment. Now? As time went by, as he grew to feel safe? Now it was all coming back with a vengeance.

It started when he was sitting and staring out of the window, and panic suddenly gripped him as he felt phantom hands crawling up his skin. He began to sweat, and panic, and jerk around in his seat. By the time he’d realised it wasn’t real, he’d scratched his arms raw and bruised his legs from kicking. Thankfully, Angrboda was out on a food run, so he didn’t catch him.

Then there would be thoughts that would enter his head. Sometimes when he would see Angrboda, he would ponder having sex with the not-so-nice man, before reminding himself that he didn’t have to, that Hela wasn’t forcing him.

He’d go out into Angrboda’s garden and pick up a flower and have violent flashbacks to the Tenderlily incident and burst into tears, phantom aches finding their way onto his body. He couldn’t even eat any food that was remotely phallic-shaped, it was just too much.

He began to sink into a deep depression after that. He didn’t cut himself or anything, self-preservation had always been one of his defining features, but he didn’t feel motivated to do much more than smile and look pretty any time that Angrboda paid him any mind. The last thing he needed was some Jotunn feeling sorry for him.

.

Thor marched with vigour. He had a man on the ground, Parson, currently looking for Loki. He had was in Vanaheim at the moment, the most obvious place for Loki to go given his pregnancy… if he was still pregnant. Thor gripped Jarnborn tighter.

For now though, his focus was on Jotunheim. The land he was about to conquer.

For his queen! For his people!

And for his heir!


	13. Chapter 13

Angrboda was petty and annoying, but he was one skilled seidrmadr. Loki sat at the window, staring out of it, his arm over his belly, when a colourful burst of light caught his attention.

“You’ve been brooding these last few days,” Angrboda’s voice permeated the room.

“I often brood.”

“Doesn’t sound healthy.” Angrboda paused for a moment. “It has nothing to do with why you’re hiding from your sister, does it?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Angrboda moved towards him, he flinched. He wasn’t in the mood to be near anybody right now. “You know, I’m only half-Jotunn. I know what it’s like to have a troubled family.”

“I really don’t think you do.”

“My mother was Vanir and my father was Jotunn. I’m the product of rape. My mother tried to get rid of me after I was born by drowning me, but her father managed to stop her. Instead of raising me himself, he forced her to raised me and _Norns_ she hated me! She’d beat me over nothing, she’d lock me in a room for hours and hours and hours on end. I don’t think I was touched very much, as a baby. She mostly left me on the floor and let me roll around in my own faeces.”

“Then how did you survive?”

“My grandfather threatened to kill her if I died.”

“Why didn’t she just run away?”

“My grandfather was a… very powerful man. He was the southern king of Vanaheim, she was a princess… _was_ , because she couldn’t take it anymore and tried to stab me with a butcher’s knife, and he had her arrested and stripped of her titles.”

Wow. Loki’s uncle, Vé was the northern king of Vanaheim. Vanaheim had, in total, 4 kings. Vé, Vili, Bjorn and Dagr. Vé had a daughter, but she was still princess. Vili had one son and that was it. He didn’t know much about Bjorn and Dagr, they were kings but their kingdoms were jokes, really, little more than big towns. This would have happened before he was born, from what he’d garnered, Angrboda was centuries older than he.

“How did you get so good at seidr?”

“After my mother tried to stab me, my grandfather didn’t really know what to do with me. I was barely a century old. He sent somebody to make sure I had food, but that was about it. Nobody really wanted to admit that there was a member of the royal family that was both a bastard and half-Jotunn. One day, I stumbled across some ladies practicing seidr. I was fascinated and made the same motions with my hands. Turned out I was a natural. They took me in and taught me all sorts of stuff. The High Priestesses of Vanaheim.”

“My mother was taught by them.”

“Frigga?”

“Yes.”

“Makes sense. King Freyr was quite fond of seidr, he probably thought it would be a good idea for his daughters to learn it.” Loki nodded. “Anyways, that’s my story.” He looked at where Loki’s hand rested over Tree. “I understand if you don’t want to share yours. But if you ever do, I’m a good listener.”

.

Angrboda left him alone for a month after that, only responding to him. It was scary, and yet soothing.

“Why aren’t you out there, fighting with the others?” Loki asked one day. “You’re trained in seidr, surely you’d be an invaluable asset.”

“Who said I’m not fighting?” Angrboda gestured to his pools. “I am the reason your brother’s army hasn’t made it past the border yet.”

“How? How can you fight from so far away?”

Angrboda pointed him in the direction of some thick tomes. “I got these from Svartalfheim. I found them in the Depths of Despair when I made pilgrimage there about a millennium ago. An Old God game them to me.” Loki gazed upon the books in awe. “He granted me use of them, as well as this,” Angrboda pointed to one of his many tattoos. It was a tattoo of a circle, decorated by runes on the outside of it. Come to think of it, it looked more like a mirror. “It grants me omnipresence over my chosen dominion. Right now, that would be this, the Ironwood.”

“That’s how you found me.”

“Aye, that is how I found you.”

“What other secrets do your tattoos hold?”

“And why would I tell you, _Loki_?

Loki didn’t have a good response for that, so just stayed silent.

.

Thor electrocuted his third tree monster of the day. These beasts were growing in number and size. His eyes crackled with lightning. Not a single Jotunn yet. It was clear that these were beasts of seidr, if only he had Hela to help.

At first he had thought perhaps that Loki was here, but it had always been more of an illusionist, fitting of his Trickster title. These were no mere illusions, these were _very_ corporeal.

Swinging Jarnborn, he charged at yet another one of the damned trees.

.

When Hela received news of the chaos on the frontlines, she growled and cursed the damned brat growing inside of her. She immediately ripped a sheet of paper out of the closest notepad to her and mumbled a spell into it. She rolled it up.

“Give this to Thor,” she thrust it into a nearby servant’s hands. “Tell him to open it up and throw it at one of those thrice damned trees. It will kill all of them.”

“Of course, your majesty.”

.

Thor followed Hela’s instructions, and the trees all burned to the ground, turning to char and ashes. Great. They’d fought for two weeks and thirty men had died, but at least this bit was over.

Thor swung his axe, being lifted into the heir. Time to storm Utgardr.

.

Loki taught himself a spell from Angrboda’s books. He couldn’t help himself, they were just so amazing. He picked a slender volume. It wasn’t as though Angrboda had said that he _couldn’t_ look through these books, and he didn’t have his usual parenting volumes with him.

These spells were _insane_! There was one to decapitate someone, one to make someone fall in love with you, one to create a huge, blazing fire. He didn’t know how to do any of this!

He started small. He could already transform basic, small things into other things. He decided to try a larger version of that spell: transforming a tree into a bilgesnipe. He spent an entire two weeks practicing on the trees near Angrboda’s home. When he finally did it, he collapsed back in relief. Success!

Then the beast charged at him, and he flicked his hand in the reverse motion, turning it back into a tree which he just narrowly managed to avoid being under.

It was exhilarating.

The next one he tried was a spell to make an entire room light up- not just a small flicker from his hand, but the entire room. It was _insane_!

He slowly begun growing addicted to the book. About a month into this addiction, Angrboda snatched the book from him.

“Loki!” He snapped his fingers, irritated. “Loki, snap out of it. Loki, when is the last time that you slept?”

“Give me the book!” Loki clawed at him. Angrboda held him off. Loki felt his arms pulled behind him, suddenly he was in a chair. His arms were bound behind him. Water was being thrown in his face.

“Loki, snap out of it, _snap out of it_!” Angrboda slapped him across the face twice. Eventually Loki stopped struggling.

“What’s going on? What happened? Where am I? What are you doing?”

“You were overcome by dark seidr,” Angrboda tutted, waving a hand to untie him. “Loki, you should _never_ venture into dark seidr alone, it is dangerous. Many people have lost their minds to it. You are _pregnant_ , you are potentially harming the baby.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Loki blinked, suddenly very hungry and very tired.

“Come,” Angrboda helped him into the bed Angrboda had conjured for him his first night there. “It’ll take a while to get you back to normal.”

“So addictive…” Loki mumbled.

“I know, I know. I’ve been there.”

“How-how do you know so much?”

“I was _taught_ , Loki. And before that I had to undergo many, many physical trials. It’s not safe to go in alone.”

“Then _teach me_!” Loki begged. “Hela will slaughter me as I am.”

Angrboda contemplated this. Helblindi had told him to do whatever it took to get Loki to stay… but ethically, it was risky to teach Loki dark seidr while pregnant. “I will… once the baby is born, but not a moment before. If you go too far you could seriously damage your child… there are spells that will unconsciously make you sacrifice bits of yourself in that book. What if one of them were to take the life of your child? And don’t go through my potions without me either, some of those are dangerous too.”

.

Utgardr was… not on fire, but mostly melted. Thor’s lightning had burned a hole right through the capitol. And still no Jotnar anywhere in sight. It was strange, like a ghost-town. Where were they all? Did they migrate or something?

_Did Loki escape here? Take refuge with its brothers? Tip them off?_

But he’d only had a week’s advance. Then two months from the tree monsters… hmmm… maybe. Maybe Loki was here. And if Loki was here…

Then his soon-to-be-born heir was here too.

.

While Loki was recovering from his brief dark seidr high, he couldn’t help but ponder Thor’s words.

_‘Our child.’_

_‘_ **_Our_ ** _child.’_

Thor hadn’t even wanted to get him pregnant! Hadn’t wanted to touch him or anything of the sorts! Then Hela’s words popped into his mind. ‘You’ve always wanted Thor’ or something to that effect. How did she know? How did she even know that he’d always had that sick desire for Thor? That he’d craved his brother since before he knew the meaning of the word? He felt sick to his stomach. Well, he supposed that he’d been punished appropriately for it.

But why ‘their’ child? Didn’t Thor only want Loki to give birth to a baby for Hela? Didn’t he mean Hela and Thor’s child? And why did he keep Loki’s child as heir when Hela was pregnant? Tree was going to be a bastard, Hela’s baby would be legitimate, surely Thor realised that nobody would approve of Tree, nobody would follow Tree. Heimdall was mistaken about that.

“ ** _Our_** child.” He mumbled, hand over Tree. “Just ours.”


	14. Chapter 14

Helblindi and Byleistr had long transferred their army to the Easter Mountains, where they joined Kari’s kingdom. Word had been sent out to the lesser, free tribes of Jotunheimr. Everybody was to unite and fight as one.

The seidrfólk had all united and were ready to combat Hela and Thor’s forces. They’d sent out word to the rest of their allies: Niffleheim, Muspelheim, and Moersa, as well as aplea to the rest of the realms and the universe. Hela was attacking, nowhere was safe.

.

Loki was six months along and Angrboda insisted on casting a spell to determine the sex of the baby.

“If I have to hear you call that thing Tree _one more damned time_ ~!”

“Well, whether it’s a boy or a girl or both, _I’m still going to be calling it Tree because_ ** _I_** _like the name, dammit!_ ”

It was a boy. One child, a boy. Loki felt his heart skip a beat. There was no way that Hela would let this child be heir, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with potential sexism once he overthrew her. A boy, a little boy. He was going to be having a boy. He was so excited! Really, he was! All he’d ever had were sons… he wanted a girl, really really badly. One day, he wanted a daughter. It wasn’t going to happen this pregnancy, but he’d get pregnant again, he knew he would, and when he did, he really hoped that it was a girl. He’d always wanted a little-Frigga, granted now that he knew that they weren’t really related, he knew that that could never happen. It broke his heart.

.

Angrboda made a second visit to his kings that same month. “The runt’s child will be a boy.”

“Ah,” Byleistr nodded. “Excellent, a grandson of Laufey and Odin to lead our army into war against Asgard and the Nine. Keep us posted, Angrboda, and remember, he must suspect nothing.”

“Of course, my king. How goes the war?”

“They have not found us yet. We have been joined by Kari and your uncle. We are expecting Queen Sindr on the morrow.”

“Fire beasts?”

“We share a common hatred of Hela.”

“That is fair. And what about Midgard?”

“What use are they to us? Mortals are feeble and useless.”

“Anything is better than nothing, your highness.”

Byelsitr contemplated the statement for a moment. “I suppose that your words hold some truth. Very well, we shall contact Midgard sometime this week.”

“Thank you, my liege.”

.

Heimdall stared around at the people of Asgard whom he’d managed to save. He could still see, even though he wasn’t in his observatory. He could see Hela, on her throne, three months pregnant with Thor’s child, the bump only just beginning to show.

He could see Thor blindly searching for the Jotnar.

He couldn’t see Loki, but that was normal.

He could see armies across the Nine and beyond marching to Jotunheimr. Whose side they were going to fight on was anybody’s guess. Hela needed to be stopped, any old king who remembered her would know that. Heimdall remembered a time way back when, before her banishment, when Odin was just beginning to realise how evil she was. That time that she tried to murder Thor in his crib. It had been the last straw.

In all honesty, Heimdall had no clue how this spell could be broken. Nobody in existence had ever broken one. Then again, it had never been this urgent to break it, and there _had_ only ever been three uses of it throughout history.

If only he had the Conch, then he could open the Halls of Valhalla and summon those great warriors to fight for their descendants. Alas, the Conch was lost a long time ago. Odin was the last person to ever use it, he’d summoned Bor for guidance on how to deal with Hela.

“Heimdall!” Valkyrie’s voice rang through the room he was in. They were inhabiting a secret bunker which Odin had built during the second war with the Frost Giants. “We’ve brought back some supplies.”

The only people trusted to go on supply runs were Valkyrie, Sif and the Warriors Three (who had had to leave their positions as spies once they’d brought Loki to HQ) and Gudrun the Fair.

Seeing Gudrun was bittersweet for Heimdall. His parents had had three children. He, the oldest, followed by Sif and Sigurd. Before he ran away to do Norns knew what with Lorelei, Gudrun and Sigurd had dated for a while. He couldn’t imagine that it was much easier for Sif.

Gudrun had fair skin and locks of pure gold (like Sif’s used to be before Loki got jealous of her getting all of Thor’s attention. He still hadn’t forgiven him for that). She had the voice of an angel… and she was supposed to have been his sister-in-law by now. Damn you, Sigurd! His idiot brother was always making the wrong choices. How he’d become the Hero of Asgard was beyond Heimdall- he’d slept with all of the Valkyries. This was true. Shortly after Hela’s imprisonment, when Sigurd was barely an adolescent, the horny fuck had gone and slept with all of the Valkyries. He hated his brother sometimes, truly. It had come up during Heimdall’s interview for the position of Gatekeeper. Damned Sigurd.

He missed his little brother.

.

Loki, in his boredom, had taken up knitting. Angrboda happened to have some wool, and had told him to knock himself out. He had 5 patches of a blanket for the baby done. 43 more to go. It was green and red and light blue and gold. His family’s colours, his _nuclear_ family’s colours. Gold for Odin, light blue for Frigga, red for Thor, and green for him, because dammit, that was his family and he’d fight anybody who said otherwise. He was _gearing up_ to fight the one person who challenged that belief more than ever. Hela’s body wouldn’t reform until the next Ragnarok, or the first one… he wasn’t really sure if what he and Thor had pulled off truly counted as Ragnarok. It wasn’t a rebirth, the people weren’t truly happy, for all of their lies to Hela.

“ _Our child_ ,” Loki repeated to himself. It felt like there was something obvious there, something that he was supposed to see. It was like Thor was talking to him for all of a second, which made no sense whatsoever. Thor didn’t like him that way, he knew it. He’d spent years pining over his brother, and once, when they were both drunk, he’d confessed it to Thor. Thor had laughed at him and brushed his words off as brotherly affection. _‘Why of course I love you, Loki. You’re my baby brother. I will always be there to protect you_.’ a) disappointing, b) not exactly true at the moment, Thor.

And besides, if Thor _had_ liked him that way, then his heart’s wickedest desire wouldn’t have been to get rid of him. So why had Thor started that weird thing when Loki had fallen pregnant? Why was he touching Loki’s belly and invading his personal space? What was going on? Had the spell lapsed temporarily? He doubted it. Even with his cuffs on, he would have felt a breach in the seidr holding _his_ Thor captive. So that meant that it was something else, something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

He could ask Angrboda, the man was well-versed in seidr… but he didn’t trust him. Despite everything that Angrboda had done for him, Loki _still_ didn’t trust him, especially with the knowledge that the child Loki carried was Thor’s and not Fandral’s. That would be dangerous. A child of the king invading your land was a powerful enough tool, never mind that Loki carried Thor’s chosen heir.

That still just didn’t make any sense to him, though! Surely Thor should have picked Hela’s child! Then, Thor had always loved children. Maybe that was Thor’s wickedest desire? To have a child. But that made no sense! What was so wrong about wanting a child!?

_Unless it was your brother’s child_ , a deep and nagging voice inside him laughed. _Unless you thought your brother was your brother and that having a child with him would ruin the child, or something of the sort. Unless you were fearful of creating a monster, or dooming some poor kid to a lifetime of ridicule and humiliation. Didn’t that fit Thor’s MO? That he cared too much about everybody else?_

But that made no sense, because then Thor’s other wicked desire would be to have Loki in his bed, the two desires would have had to go hand in hand, and Thor had made it abundantly clear since day 1 that he wanted nothing to do with Loki, so that ruled out one of the necessary desires needed for Thor to have _wanted_ a child by him and Loki.

This whole thing was so confusing! It made him want some mead, but he had to wait 6 more months for that. Two years if he intended to breastfeed. **_Damnit!_**

.

Hela eyed her liquor cabinet warily. Norns she wanted one! Damned child!

She was a month away from being able to find out the child’s sex. She hoped it was a girl, all the men in her life had been complete _morons!_

She needed to have her child before Loki had his, assuming that he was still intent on giving birth to his child. It was the only way to 100% rule out Loki’s child’s claim to the throne. It would be safe to deliver after nine months, so she didn’t exactly have the longest window to have it c-sectioned out. Time was precious, and seemingly against her.

She decided to take a walk. It had been a while since she had gone to see Fenris Wolf. She missed her little baby.

“Fenris!” She called. “Darling, come to mama!”

The ginormous dog came bounding up to her, before bending down and giving her a full-body lick that covered her in saliva. She shook it off. “Sweetheart, I do not know what to do. Everything is so stressful right now! Could you do mama a favour, huh? Can I send you on a special quest?”

Fenris nodded her head up and down, affirmative. Hela smiled.

“I want you to find Loki Laufeyson and that little brat he is about to deliver, and I want you to kill him. And if anybody stands in your way, do not hesitate to make a snack of them. Understood?”

Fenris nodded her head up and down, happily.

“Good. Thank you sweetheart, make mama proud!”


	15. Chapter 15

Now that Loki knew he was having a boy, he could contemplate boy names. Tree was nice, but it wasn’t going to last forever, even he knew that. Then again, given that he himself was genderfluid, was it truly fair to assume that the child would be a solid boy? What if he wanted to be a she? Maybe sticking to Tree wasn’t such a bad idea after all!

Angrboda had taught him some new seidr. Not the dark seidr that he craved so much, but rather lighter seidr, like how to heal injuries. Apparently Angrboda was a skilled nurse.

“I had to be,” he’d said. “The High Priestesses believe it necessary for everyone to learn the healing arts.”

“They’re not wrong.”

“True.”

.

Life as sole ruler of Asgard was _so boring_! Hela couldn’t wait until this kid was out and kicking! She’d hire a wet maid and march straight into battle, dammit.

.

Their next obstacle was a ravine. Thor easily flew across it… but his men couldn’t fly. Thor groaned, these people were slowing him down, dammit! Couldn’t he just leave them behind? No, Hela would kill him. Then revive him just to kill him again.

Thor begun to strike down trees, and flew down the ravine with them, building a bridge across the river. He looked up at his men. “What are you waiting for? Climb down!”

They complied.

.

The Argsons and the Argsons weren’t speaking to each other. Everybody knew that. To clarify, that was Argnold and Gunther Argson who were not speaking to Frösti and Frederick Argson. Why? Argnold and Gunther were of the opinion that Loki’s child was Thor’s true heir, and Frösti and Frederick were of the opinion that Hela’s child was Thor’s true heir.

A similar phenomenon had occurred between the Bjornsons and the Bjornsons, as well as the Gunthersons and the Gunthersons. It seemed that the entire kingdom was dissolving into chaos.

.

The months flew by fast, and before Loki knew it, he was ten months pregnant. Woohoo, only two more months to go.

Angrboda had said that the baby was developing well. A healthy little boy whom he still had no name for.

“The next time that I go for supplies, I can try to forage a book of baby names,” Angrboda sighed. “Please don’t name him Tree.”

“That’s none of your business,” Loki growled, but yes, he wasn’t going to be naming his baby boy Tree. It would only make the children of Asgard laugh. “But thank you, I would like the book very much.”

.

_Kari_

_Helblindi_ , no, that was his brother’s name. His biological brother’s name, not his _real_ brother’s name.

 _Byleistr_ , no, same problem.

 _Angrboda_. No.

 _Loki_ , that would be vain even for him.

 _Jarnsaxa_ , something about that name told him that people with it were troubled individuals.

_Dofri_

_Gerdr_

_Logi_ , hmmm… not **_too_** bad

_Miðvitnir_

_Mjoll_ , it would be a nice tribute to Mjolnir, wouldn’t it…?

 _Vali,_ no. He was pretty sure that that was the name of one of his half-brothers.

 _Ymir_ , his grandfather biologically, his great-uncle otherwise.

_Beli_

_Atla_

He didn’t like any of these. Móðguðr… he liked that, actually. Furious Battler, he didn’t mind it so much. The name made him smile. Móðguðr… there. That was his son’s name.

.

Not even Angrboda saw the giant black wolf coming. He was just tending his garden with Loki in the hut trying his hand at cooking, when all of a sudden he’s face-to-face with a huge black wolf. The wolf barrelled into the hut, knocking down the walls and the roof. Angrboda heard a scream. _Loki_!

Panicked, Angrboda immediately conjured vines to restrain the beast, but it broke through them. It started to look for something, it must have been sent to find Loki. Helblindi and Byleistr would kill him. He launched an attack of fire at the mutt, but its fur wouldn’t light. With a mighty roar, he charged the beast, allowing himself to merge with the elements around him for an all-powerful attack.

He ran straight through it, without pausing once, creating an Angrboda-sized hole through the beast’s flanks. It gave one last mighty roar before collapsing… on his hut. Fuck.

“Loki! Loki!” Angrboda screamed. He used his vines to push the behemoth out of the way. He knew, in the back of his mind, that he was using more seidr than he should be, but this was urgent. They _needed_ this child to save the kingdom, it was the only way! “ _Loki_!” He was getting chills up his spine. He used his seidr to shift the rubble away. He found Loki laying withhis back oddly twisted, underneath the roof. There was no time to waste.

He grabbed his knife and begun to slice through Loki’s stomach. The kid needed to be delivered, it was too risky to not do it this way. He sliced through the flesh with expert ease, and removed the child. 11 months, it could be worse. He sent a rush of seidr through the child to awaken it, and once it was awake, he placed it on Loki’s chest. Time to start mending Loki.

He lifted his hand to summon needles and threads from the rubble. He sewed Loki’s stomach up and placed layer after layer of seidr on him to heal him. Once he was certain that Loki would recover, he took a breath and sat down. He collapsed.

.

When Loki eventually came to, he felt something on his chest. Grunting, he pushed whatever it was off of his chest. Then he heard crying next to him and his eyes opened _wide_. He sat up quickly and immediately felt dizziness hit him. He put a hand in the snow to steady himself, and immediately his skin shifted. He was Jotunn again.

He supposed it was his surroundings, but that suddenly made him feel better. He took a few breaths to steady himself, the crying never ceasing. He looked down.

It was small, with pale skin and a tuft of blonde hair. His baby, he put his hand over his stomach to make sure. After all, how could he have given birth without even knowing it? The bump was gone, but there were stitches. Well, that would explain it. He picked it up, it stopped crying. That was when he started crying. This was all too much, he couldn’t do this! He wasn’t ready to be a parent, he hadn’t seen it coming! What had even happened here? Everything was a mess. He held the tiny body to his chest. Oh Móðguðr… he grimaced, holding the baby in front of his dace. Móðguðr? What had he been thinking? That name wasn’t fit for an infant, his child wasn’t a warrior that people could pin their hopes onto, he was a **_baby_** , **_Loki’s_** baby! “Mödí,” he mumbled. Let the child grow into whatever it wished, but dammit, for the meantime he was still a child, little more than an infant. Not even Thor could fight wars fresh out of Frigga. “My baby Mödí.” The baby smiled at himin agreement. It wasn’t a real name, let alone a real word. He supposed his child would have to be the one to give it meaning. He was very Lokijarson that way.

Loki took a breath and let down his guise. He was no longer hidden, for one brief moment. Skurge could see him, but that wasn’t the point.

Heimdall. Heimdall could see him.

.

Angrboda woke up in his hut, a woman hovering above him. She had long black hair and piercing green eyes, and full breasts… and she was Loki.

“Lo-Loki? What- why are you-?”

“A woman? I don’t know. My body controls what gender I am, and it felt female, so here I am.”

“But, why?”

“Dunno. Maybe because I just had a kid?”

“You need to be a woman to be a mother?” Angrboda chuckled. “That is so Asgardian of you. How long was I out?”

“Three days longer than me.”

“Ah. You fixed the hut in three days?”

“Aye.”

“What was that thing?”

“My sister’s dog. Clearly she knows where I am. Look, I thank you for your hospitality, but I must leave. It is too dangerous for Mödí and me.”

“Mödí…” Angrboda hummed, looking at the child in the bassinet that Loki had spent days crafting with seidr and wood. “Alright. But know this: with your current seidr, you’re as good as dead out there if she finds you. You wouldn’t be able to put up a fight against her.”

Angrboda… was right. If Hela were to find him, he’d stand no chance.

“Then teach me. The child is born, he is hale, I am ready. Teach me what I must learn to defend myself. And teach me fast, for I have briefly allowed Heimdall to see me, and that means that Hela could have seen me as well.”

“Very well.” Angrboda didn’t care. He had enough wards on this place, which he would double-check in a moment’s time. He was safe, the only way to this hill was by foot, and no maps and compasses would lead here either. He, of course, decided not to share this with Loki yet. This was his chance, this was what he needed to keep Loki glued to him. He tried not to smirk. Dark seidr was an incredibly intimate thing to teach, Loki wouldn’t be able to leave him for years and years, forget six months. He could keep him as his own personal pet, this was perfect!

.

Hela cursed and screamed and ranted and raged. Not only was her beloved dog dead, but the fucking brat had been born already! Urgh! She turned to Skurge.

“Nobody must ever find out about this, do you hear me? Nobody must find out about Loki’s child, at least until my own is born!” A month and she’d take it out, that time would pass by in the blink of an eye.

“Aye, Your Highness.” Skurge bowed.

“Do you know where they are? Can you draw me a map?”

“Unfortunately not, my Queen. The space was ensconced in dark seidr, I could only see the very tiny portion which he allowed me to view.”

Hela cursed. “Very well then. We must do everything in our power to keep this from the people of Asgard!”

.

Heimdall smiled. “Sif, sister. I need you to do me a favour. I need you to spread word.”

“Of?” Sif looked up at her brother in deep confusion.

“Tell them. Tell them all. The heir has been born. Loki has given birth to a boy. All Hail Prince Mödí!”


	16. Chapter 16

People in the streets knew before the week was over, much to Hela’s chagrin. Someone had leaked the information, she wanted that person **_dead_**!

.

The streets of Asgard were no more peaceful with the news of the birth of Mödí. Those who believed in Mödí’s right to rule felt more justified in their beliefs, and those who believed in Hela’s child’s right to rule only felt animosity towards the newborn.

No unity. Nothing.

.

Hela had to act quickly. If Loki were to leave with Mödí there would be no guarantee of seeing him again before Mödí was grown and fighting for his right to Asgard’s throne. Right now at least they knew that the last place that Loki had been was Jotunheimr, and loathe as she was to admit it, Fenris’s corpse would easily help someone looking for the runt.

There was only one option, really. But she hesitated. Should she tell Thor? She knew he would immediately go and fetch the baby, but he’d expect her to raise it as their own. She couldn’t kill it, because Thor would expect her to bring it back to life. She couldn’t just kill Thor and be done with it, because the people would expect her to bring _him_ back to life! Dammit, sometimes being the Goddess of Death was frustrating.

What if she just decided that she didn’t care about her peoples’ opinions. It wasn’t like they could overthrow her or anything, she was simply too powerful.

She decided to do nothing for now. There was no guarantee that Loki’s child would even be a threat. After all, she and Thor were the more powerful of Odin’s children, so her child with Thor would be more powerful than Thor’s child with Loki. That made sense!

.

Mödí was a handful! He cried _all the damned time_ and he forever wanted to be held. Loki couldn’t get enough of it.

He coddled his baby boy whenever he could, even though his chest hurt like hell from all the sucking he did. Loki wished his body would take the hint and female-ify soon, he was pretty sure it would hurt less if he were a girl, right? Angrboda had suggested he just wear his Jotunn form. Loki had laughed, and that had been the end of that conversation.

Speaking of which, today was to be his first dark seidr lesson with Angrboda. Great, the quicker he learned what he needed to learn, the sooner that he could leave.

.

“I’m going to teach you how to teleport.” Angrboda said.

“Wait, what?” Everybody knew that you could only travel magically via the bifrost.

“And then I’m going to teach you some basic common sense, because _yes_ I can read your mind, Loki.” Oh, right. Frigga had taught him how to close his mind. Angrboda snorted. “Glad I didn’t have to teach you that one too. Now put Mödí down for a second and hold my hands.” Loki complied, albeit reluctantly. Mödí made grabby hands and began to cry. Grumbling, Angrboda muttered a few words and the room was silent.

“Hey! What did you do!?” Loki growled.

“I placed a silencing charm on him. Can’t teach you seidr with all that racket.” Loki glared at the man. Angrboda had a point, but how _dare_ he touch Loki’s baby with seidr without asking first! “Now, take my hands and think of the area outside of my house. When I feel that you’re on the right frequency, I’ll let you go and you’ll be able to teleport, but not a moment before then lest you end up teleporting only your arm or something.”

“Alright.”

This process took three days.

The next thing Angrboda taught him was a spell to defend an area: to cover it with man-eating plants. Then how to control a person. Then how to manipulate multiple minds. Then how to shard ice (“How do you not know how to do this? You are ethnically Jotunn!”). Then how to manipulate a person’s senses. Then how to create an inferno.

Three months later, and Loki probably knew enough to keep himself and Mödí safe… and yet he still wanted to learn more. Angrboda put his arm around Loki’s shoulder and Loki leaned into the touch, purring.

Angrboda smirked. Oh yeah, he was doing his duty to his planet alright.

.

Thor lead his army up a big mountain. So far they had conquered about half of the planet, but with no sign of any Frost Giants anywhere, dammit! It looked as though the whole place had been deserted, entire village had been burnt down, nobody in sight.

Good thing it wasn’t winter! They’d been here a year, during winter they’d used Thor’s powers, they’d cultivated the land, they’d amassed quite a large supply of food, and they’d sent precious resources that they’d mined back home to loved ones. They’d flourished!

They just hadn’t found a single damned Jotunn yet! Thor hoped this big mountain would yield a different ending. He’d go there and check it out tonight.

.

Hela had, in the end, just given birth when the time came. Why do it any differently? Might as well have a strong, healthy child to one day kill Loki and his brat.

Her name was Hel, named after her mother. A little ball of perfection. Black hair, green eyes, and a soul like Tartarus. She cuddled her little girl once, and then placed her in the arms of a wet-nurse.

Jotunheimr, here she comes!

.

The moment Thor landed at the top of the mountain, he knew this had to be it. A dozen flaming arrows were shot at him, launched by members of the treacherous other-half of Vanaheim. He couldn’t wait to give Vili and Vé their lands! It distracted him from his want for revenge on the runt who had likely aborted their child together. He was going to kill Loki when he found it.

A lava demon jumped out of the snow all of a sudden, launching itself at him, and lighting itself up. He screamed in agony as it burned away at his skin. He radiated lighting at it, frying it, but the damage was done. He was severely weakened, he’d need to go back down to be healed, even he wasn’t daft enough to believe that he could fight like this.

.

“My kings!” Jarnsaxa of the Nine rushed into the unofficial throne room. “My kings! Thor has arrived!”

“Alright, friends. It is time to show Asgard what the rest of the Nine are made of!” Helblindi turned to his fellow leaders and raised his hammer, the very one that Laufey gave him.

“Charge!” Sindr bellowed.

.

Mödí was four months old and was one chubby baby, Loki worried for his health.

“Chill,” Angrboda kissed up Loki’s spine as Loki sat up staring at his infant who was staring at him from his crib. He placed a hand on Loki’s midsection and dragged him back down into the bed that they now shared for more sex.

.

“Heimdall, do you have any new news from Loki?” Sif questioned her brother.

“No, none more. It is for the best, we do not wish for him to expose himself to Hela’s forces either, right?”

“Right… you haven’t seen Sigurd, have you?” She looked up at her older brother.

Heimdall smiled sadly. “Not since mother and father’s funeral, the same as you,” he said, bitterly. “No, sister. Nobody has seen the Hero of Asgard in a **_long_** time.”

.

The people in Asgard were about to tear each other apart. Now that Hel had been born, those who were firm supporters of her right to reign were shouting it out louder than ever. Those who believed that Hela had enchanted Thor and that that squashed any right that Hel should ever have to reign were similarly shouting their words from the top of their lungs.

And then all hell broke loose when the body of a seamstress, Greta Friggsdottir, was discovered with a bloody knife sticking out of her back, and words in her blood on the wall that read: Hail Hel!

.

Hela flew into Jotunheimr via the Bifrost. Step 1. Find Thor and help him take over this wasteland. Step 2. Find Fenris, bring her back to life via the Eternal Flame. Step 3. Find and kill Loki Laufeyson and that brat of his.

Unfortunately, Skurge couldn’t see where Thor was either anymore. Apparently the Jotnar had cast a masking spell over themselves and their area. Impressive, she'd had no clue that those idiots had such a capacity for seidr. Not that it would make much of a difference once they were all enslaved under Asgard. Well, the strong ones anyways, everyone else would be executed, naturally.

.

The day was approaching that Mödí would be weaned. In all honesty, Angrboda wasn’t sure what he was going to do with Loki. He could always kill him, but where would the fun be in that? He wasn’t a bad lay, at least not after that brief ‘Umm… I-I’m not sure’, but Angrboda had tucked all of those memories neatly away for him, had helped him become more confident, and he’d been a fantastic student. Maybe he ought to keep Loki as a seidr-slave? And he was the son of Laufey, treason be damned, it would do his own bloodline good to have a child on him. **_Their_** child would be so much more powerful than bloody _Mödí…_

Maybe he ought to do that then, keep Loki as his slave, knock him up, and get rid of him later on. Yeah, that sounded alright.

~~It wasn't like he secretly wanted a child on Loki. It wasn't like he thought the runt beautiful... because that would imply that he was falling in love, and Angrboda didn't do love.~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand now he looks more like my Angrboda :)


	17. Chapter 17

It took Hela an entire week to find her singed husband. She growled, nobody hurt Thor but her, dammit! They were the children of Odin, they were _gods,_ whoever did this would pay!

“My beloved,” he breathed once he saw her. His eyes drifted to her midsection. “Love, does this mean-?” His voice was little more than a whisper.

“Yes, my dear. It is a sweet little girl fit to rule all of Asgard. I’ve named her Hel.” Hela smiled at Thor.

“Rule over Asgard? Surely you do not mean to marry her to whichever child Loki cooks up.”

“My love, Loki has deserted us. To name his child your heir would be to name a traitor your heir. He is beyond our sights, beloved. He will no doubt raise your child in his ways.”

“No,” Thor laughed. “Impossible. Loki’s child is my child, he would not let _it_ sway him. He will be aThorson through and through.”

‘He?’, so Thor had heard. Hela clenched her fist. She’d kill the runt… then, at this point, she’d likely have to kill Thor. She couldn’t **_kill_** him, as he was a proper god, but she could always splay his remains as dust across the ground, never to reform again. That was almost like death.

“How are we faring?”

“Poorly, my queen. From what we can tell, they have allies with them. It seems as though they were tipped off about our attack.”

“Well that would make sense. Loki was here a few months ago.”

“Loki- _Loki_ was here!?” Thor gaped. Why on earth would that mongrel run head-first into war, unless… unless it had come to seek asylum from its brothers. That would mean that if it had kept the child, the his heir was at the top of that mountain. Growling, Thor turned to Hela. “We storm the mountain at night. We shall have it by the month’s end.”

“That is ambitious,” Hela nodded. “I am impressed. Very well then, husband. We storm the mountain this night.”

.

It was the sixth month, Loki was due to stop breastfeeding any day now. This was the earliest the baby could be weaned.

“Maybe you ought to continue for a few more months,” Angrboda said, desperately.

“We need to leave soon, and I am afraid that my body might not produce enough breastmilk on the run.”

“Then stay. There is no reason to leave. All of the Aesir who could hunt you down are too busy fighting the kings’ and their allies.”

“Hela still has agents not in the war who could work to hurt me. Remember Fenris?”

“And what would you have done had I not been there? You would have surely died.”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t have been so off-guard either had I been elsewhere.” Loki sighed. “Look, your concern for my wellbeing is truly heartwarming, but I need to be leaving soon. I cannot risk Mödí.”

Angrboda bit his lip. He supposed that he’d be taking Mödí away soon after all. “Very well then, do what you wish, he _is_ your child.”

Mödí made a gurbling noise just then, almost as if to say ‘ha!’ This was why Angrboda didn’t have any children.

.

Eight days in and Hela was beginning to realise that it may be impossible for that ‘by the month’s end’ promise to hold true. Somehow Sindr, her mortal enemy who wasn’t Loki or Surtr or Kurse, had joined the fight and was battling alongside the Jotnar. Fuck her, dammit! And from the precision of the arrows being shot at them, she guessed that the other half of Vanaheimr was also backing them.

They were winning. Of course they were, she was the Goddess of Death, she just brought everyone on their side who died back to life. They’d all had a charm placed on them to keep them out of Valhalla- as long as they wound up in her domain, she could just kick them right back out to continue fighting for her.

They were winning, but the fight would be **_slow_** , it could take years. She growled. She needed to consult with her men, stat.

.

It was best to do it the day before Loki planned to leave, he reasoned. The baby would be best weaned by then. He waited for Loki to fall asleep, placing a charm on him to keep him in that state. He then went to go and pick up baby Mödí. The child started wailing immediately, stupid brat!

Good thing Loki was under the charm. “Angrboda, what are you doing?” Came Loki’s voice, half-asleep but panicked. How on… curses, the child must have seidr!

“I’m sorry, Loki,” and he was, he truly was for some strange reason, but Jotunheimr _needed_ Mödí. He’d seen it, his pools never lied. “I hope you understand… someday.”

Loki gasped as he found himself unable to move. Angrboda headed to the door. Loki looked into his son’s frightened eyes, and a rush of adrenaline kicked in.

There are times in life that nature amazes us, times when one simple act turns an underdog into the apex predator it needs to be. This phenomenon is best witnessed in the acts of people with loved ones in perilous situations.

I am sure, by now, you are all familiar with the term ‘Hysterical Strength’, used to describe a display of perceived supernatural strength by humans in life-or-death scenarios. Parents picking cars off of their young, children picking tractors off of their parents. That sort of thing. And what better a time to display such strength than when somebody was making escape with your infant?

Could Loki!Loki defeat Angrboda? Not a chance in Hel, his mastery of seidr still barely shone a candle on Angrboda’s. But could Mother!Loki defeat Angrboda? Well, it was definitely a more even fight.

With a scream, Loki surged from the bed, his skin shifting and icicles spurting all around him. He charged after Angrboda, spouting spell after spell after spell at the man. Angrboda turned to fight, he sent his own waves of magic at Loki once it became clear that he could not simply manipulate Loki’s body. No, the other man’s blood was fighting him too hard for him to do something as direct as that. Instead he fired back with his own ice.

Loki’s running sped up, and his spurting of ice was too erratic and powerful. Angrboda’s defences failed and as Loki pounced at him, he succumbed to his fate. He fell to the cold snow with a thud, the snow around him rapidly reddening. Loki bent down, turning back into an Às, and picking up his son. He flashed himself, allowing Heimdall to see him. “Come now, Mödí. We must pick up some things and then leave.”

.

As soon as Loki returned to the ruined hut, he went to go and pick up Angrboda’s books. He placed them all in space pockets. He turned to leave and noticed a figure at the doorway. He paused a moment. Hypothetically, despite that Hela was tied up with the war at this point, Skurge _could_ have sent someone to kill him. But when he looked outside, he noticed that it was one of Thor’s old friends and battle-buddies, Baldr the Brave.

“Heimdall sent me,” he said, before staring at the little bundle in Loki’s arms. He bowed. “All hail prince Mödí.”

“He’s just a baby,” Loki rolled his eyes.

“He is the future of Asgard,” Baldr said, reverently.

Loki paused a moment. “I know Heimdall wants to take us back… but may I have a moment?”

“Certainly, my liege.” Baldr nodded.

“Oh, and Baldr? Can you please hold Mödí a moment?”

.

Loki went into the deep snow. He wasn’t proud of this, not in the slightest, but he needed every natural advantage that he could get.

He took in Angrboda’s boy, transformed into a Jotunn, and knelt down beside the man/corpse. Hecut open Angrboda’s shirt, and plunged his arm into the man’s chest. He grabbed his heart, tossed his head back, and with a wet slurping noise, begun eating Angrboda’s heart. Angrboda’s raw, dead heart.

.

When Loki came back, Baldr was rocking Mödí (his nephew, though he refrained from revealing such to Loki. It was safer for him (especially now that Hela was queen) if people were unaware that he was one of Odin’s bastards. After all, look at what had happened to Tyr). If Baldr noticed a spot of red lining the corner of Loki’s lips, he said nothing, only clutched onto Loki.

“Heimdall, we are ready!” Loki shouted.

A blast of light enveloped them, and then they were gone.


	18. Chapter 18

In truth, Loki wasn’t completely off the power high associated with learning dark seidr. His memories of his time with Angrboda were fuzzy at best. Once, when Heimdall had spied him staring off lost into the distance, he simply said ‘It will come back to you in time.” It was infuriating, this feeling that Heimdall knew more than him. The two had never truly seen eye-to-eye, and even now they were merely allies of opportunity. Loki was 100% certain that once Hela was overthrown, they’d go back to their prior mutual animosity towards one another.

Still, it hurt that upon reflection, he could barely recall Mödí’s first few months of life. The little bundle currently in his arms was so precious to him. The only other child he’d had had been a product of rape… wait, that was true here, but still: Loki had been too young to properly care for Sleipnir, at least now he was an adult. And loathe as he was to admit it, at least this child had inherited his regular form. Sleipnir had seidr, but it was weak and he could not change forms with it. Or perhaps he could, and he simply chose never to do so. He was quite like his father in that regard, he preferred his horse form. Loki could relate to an extent, people used animals, but they didn’t have any expectations from them. It was a simpler life. He looked down at Mödí, perhaps he ought to change his loved one’s form into a fish or something. The pair of them could be free like that, hidden from Hela and all others for all eternity.

But then Mödí opened his eyes and they bore into Loki’s soul and he knew in that instant that his child was meant to save Asgard, that Mödí’s purpose to their people was, in fact, his destiny. This was a child who was born to be king. He was half-Thor, after all. Not this new, ugly Thor, but rather the brilliant, golden one from before. The one who had secretly stolen Loki’s heart all of those years ago, not the one who had crushed it. He had to hold out hope, he reminded himself. No seidr was permanent, it had been Frigga’s first words to him when teaching him the skill.

Frigga…

.

Mödí was **_very_** well received at the hideout. They couldn’t turn a corner without somebody bowing before him or an old person blessing him. They revered him.

Loki rolled his eyes. All of this attention was going to go to his son’s head… oh, that was where Thor had gotten it from, made sense.

He absolutely dreaded that cheeky look in Mödí’s eyes every time somebody lavished their praise upon him. His son knew **_very well_** what was going on, and Loki low-key wanted to throttle him. Damned Thor’s genes, his son was going to be an egomaniac. A well-meaning, endearing, loveable, goody egomaniac, but an egomaniac nonetheless.

.

“My prince, you know that you can not stay here long. If anyone here betrays us to Hela-” Heimdall said one morning.

“I know, Heimdall,” Loki nodded. “And I must ask a favour of you.”

“Anything, my prince.”

“I require the assistance of Baldr the Brave.”

Oh no. Had Loki figured out that Baldr was secretly Odin’s bastard? Did he plan to kill him or to use him to lure Hela out? “Certainly, my prince. I shall summon him shortly.” Better evade suspicion. RIP Baldr.

“Thank you. Please tell him to meet me at the rock entrance tomorrow morning at dawn. We will be departing then.”

.

There was how _the_ _people_ reacted to Mödí, and then there was how Thor’s friends reacted to Mödí.

Fandral kept picking him up and twirling him around and singing ballads of past quests that he’d been on. Sif rolled her eyes. Sif was much more refined with the heir to Asgard: she demonstrated weaponry to the diligent 6.5 month-old, and taught him about the different types of weapons, which were best for short range and which were best to maim a man. He enjoyed these lessons. Hogun liked to play peek-a-boo with the little tyke, and Volstagg set him off to play with Volstagg’s own children, the youngest of whom was a decade Mödí’s senior. Not bad, that was about Thor and Loki’s age difference.

It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to seek an audience with the future king, and he was most certain that Mödí was **_loving_** **_it_** , spoiled brat that he raised.

.

Baldr was ready, a cloak drawn over him. Loki too had brought a cloak (space pockets were damned useful). Mödí was blessedly asleep in Loki’s arms.

“Where are we headed, my prince?” Baldr asked, once they were out of the bunker.

“We are going to Vanaheim. We are going to where my mother was raised.”

.

They were only winning because Hela could resurrect dead people.

“This is no use, she is bound to win,” Helblindi groaned. “She is the _Goddess of Death!_ ”

Sindr perked up. “Helblindi, you genius!”

“What? What did he say?” Asked Alric of Hermatodor.

“She is the Goddess of Death… but nobody is guarding her domain!” Sindr grinned. “I shall take my men and conquer Helheim. Why keep the fight to this bloody mountain? I say let them take it! Let them think that they have won Jotunheimr, but let us go and take what belongs to them. After all, what good is Jotunheimr to Asgard if Asgard is ours?”

“But what about our people!?” Byleistr protested.

“Do not worry, fellow king. Jotunheimr isn’t going anywhere. As soon as we have won the war, it will be yours once more.”

“And if we don’t win?”

“Well, then, we are all very much fucked.”

.

Loki’s favourite thing about Vanaheim was how plush it was. Now, especially, with **_most people_** off fighting in the war, it was even more tranquil than usual. Even Baldr seemed to sense it.

“It’s so beautiful,” he breathed. Of course, Baldr had only ever seen Vanaheim once, during the war.

“Aye, that it is.” Sometimes Loki felt sorry for Baldr. It had to be tough being the son of a merchant who ran out on your mother. But at least he had made a name for himself as one of Asgard’s best swordsmen. It had been why he had chosen Baldr as his guard for his travels: that and for some reason he just felt _safe_ around Baldr. There was a quality which the man possessed that, for some reason, reminded him of Thor.

“Do you know where we need to go?”

Loki thought back to every anecdote he had ever heard about the place. Angrboda had, he believed, mentioned being found my some monks and sent there, or something like that. Njord had sent his children off there, which was all that he’d heard from his mother about how to get there. Still, he believed that she had mentioned the Vanir Highlands, by the Humming Stream, and past Gaea’s Orchard.

“We go west… there is a tavern around here that Thor and I have used before on our travels. It isa good place to get directions.”

Baldr looked worried. “My prince, are you sure that going to a tavern is a good idea? You are easily recognised, and everybody in the Nine knows by now about Mödí’s birth.”

Loki smirked at Baldr and changed his appearance into that of a Frost Giant. “All better,” he purred, laughing at Baldr’s startled face. What, had **_nobody_** told the boy about his heritage? This was why Loki liked Baldr, he wasfun to mess with. Oh, maybe **_that_** was the Thor-like quality that he felt so strongly about! Yes, that would make sense, now wouldn’t it?

“What about Mödí? You would take the future King of Asgard into a disreputable establishment at such a tender age? What if he **_saw_** things!?” Baldr asked, scandalised.

“He will see them all in time, but no. This is why you are here, for help. Stand outside when we get there, **_I_** ’ll go in and ask for directions.”

“But-”

“Do not question me, Baldr,” Loki’s voice took an ominous tone, and even the happy, bubble Mödí stopped jiggling around in his mother’s arms, seeming to sense the mood. Good, smart baby, maybe he wasn’t so like Thor after all.

.

In a deep, dark cave lodged deep into a mountain in the Vanir Highlands, three women sat around a pool, staring at the images of three travellers.

“They’re coming.” One said. She had blonde hair.

“He is carrying.” Another said. She had red hair.

“It is Ragnarok as it should be.” Concluded the last. She had black hair.


	19. Chapter 19

It was the same old creaky tavern that smelled of ale and mead that Loki remembered. A flood of memories hit him standing in the room then. Memories of Thor back before… well…

There was that time that he and Thor had come to seek information on where they could find Gladylus, a princess of a lesser realm that Asgard had dominion over who had been captured by space pirates. Loki turned around for all of two minutes and Thor had Mjolnir out, somebody’s knife in one of his biceps. Loki had had to use his silver tongue to carve them out of that one.

Then there was that time they’d come for pleasure. Thor was chatting up the ladies, and Loki had gotten drunk and gambled all of their money away thanks to opportunists. The Dark Elf had been furious to learn that they did not have the money that he (stole) had won from them ‘fairly’, but that had had nothing on the fury of Odin learning that his sons, two **_princes of Asgard,_** had:

  1. Broke a wager
  2. Tricked their way out of a wager
  3. Gotten drunk in a tavern
  4. Done all of the above in a foreign land with a foreign national



The incident had, to an extent, scarred him. Loki only ever drank moderately. The only thing in his life more traumatic than that had been… well, a lot actually. He hadn’t really been having a great time lately, or in the decade leading up to where he was currently at. For the longest time his most feared foe had been himself, his own mind. He had thought that nobody could hurt him like he himself could. Then he had met Thanos. And his Children. And Hela. And Dark!Thor. And the manipulated Asgardian Army. Aaand then, once he had let his guard down, Angrboda. Life was really dealing him shit cards right now, wasn’t it?

He thought about Mödí outside with Baldr. Maybe it wasn’t all so bad. He did get a son out of this.

.

Gildha hadn’t seen the little pipsqueak since he had blown a hole through the side of her tavern with that new-fangled seidry-doo-da of his.She glared at him. “And just what do you think you’re doing in my tavern, runt? Thought you’d have some sense after you **_burned this place to the fucking ground!_** ”

Aaah, right, that time when the entire Red Fleet was after them. That had been a fun adventure, once it was over that was. “I have come to ask for directions.”

“Oh? And why would I help you?”

“I could make it worth your while. Say, 20 space credits?”

“A thousand!”

“That’s steep! You know, those really are lovely eyes that you have there,” he let the charm ooze from his voice. He had long suspected that his silvertongue was a manifestation of his seidr, something to do with his dominion over lies most likely. He watched her eyes haze over.

“I think that we could come to an agreement,” she hummed. “What is it that you need?”

“I need to know where the Seidr Caves are. The ones where the royal family were trained.”

“I do not know where they are… but perhaps the old man by the lake will. He knows everything.”

“Where is this lake?”

"Down the hill and to the left.” Loki cursed. They’d _just_ climbed up the hill!

“Thank you, my fair lady.” He smiled, before walking out the door, having had paid nothing. Norns above he loved his silver tongue.

“Do you know where we are going?” Baldr asked, a very happy little Mödí tugging on his beard.

“Back down, apparently. She doesn’t know where the caves are, but a man there might.”

Baldr sighed. “ ** _Fine_**!”

.

Sindr couldn’t find the entrance to Helheimr. Nobody could. It was infuriating.

“Keep looking!” She barked at her men. “It must be here somewhere!”

.

They walked down the plush green hills, over sandy paths. It was paradise. The lake below was sparkling. Baldr longed for a drink from it.

“Look Mödí, those are sheep!” Loki babbled to his baby.

“Look Mödí, that’s a cow!”

“Look Mödí, that’s a donkey!”

“Look Mödí, that’s a mule!”

“Look Mödí, it’s a peasant!”

“Look Mödí, Baldr’s getting cross!”

And indeed Baldr was. He understood the need for a mother to interact with her child, but wasn’t Loki taking it a bit too far? He was treating Baldr’s nephew as though he were some local fool rather than the proud prince of two great kingdoms. Grrr!

“Look Mödí, it’s the man the lady said to find!” Loki pointed to a man wrapped up in a bunch of threadbare blankets. He was old and wrinkled and had the barest wisp of white hair sticking out of his sun-tanned skull. He sat on the docks, right on the edge of the water, dozing. Baldr had a hard time understanding how somebody could feel so comfortable with so many layers on in the intensity of the Vanir sun. “Hello, sir.” Loki said to the man. The man did not wake up. “ ** _Hello_**!” He said louder.

The man opened an eye to glare at Loki. “Quit pesterin’ me, kid. Scram!”

“Not until you help me, you kind, handsome man,” Loki purred. Baldr gagged.

“Don’t you be tryin’ your there sorcery on me, Trickster! Your silver tongue’s foolin’ n’un!” He growled.

Loki seemed taken aback. How did he… ah, this man truly did know everything! He must be a god, perhaps a god of knowledge, similar to Loki’s own father, Odin.

“Please, sir. You don’t understand, I **_need_** your help! Hela is coming, we need a way to fight her!”

“Codswallop! You don’t need nothin’ from me! And I’m not about to go makin’ myself an enemy of Hela’s! She’s **_dangerous_** you know!”

“I know!” Loki growled. “And she will only continue to be more and more dangerous if cowards like you won’t help those trying to end her reign and send her back to the Hel from which she was spawned!”

“Coward, eh? Boy, I’ve seen horror in life the likes of which you could never imagine.”

“I somehow doubt that,” Loki’s voice was flat.

The man looked furious at the seemingly insolent remark. “Fine then, Mr. Hotshot, thinks he’s better than everyone else. You think you’re smart, don’t you? Smarter than me? Fine, let’s test that. A game of chess between you and me. You win, I’ll tell you where those mountains you’re looking for are. **_I_** win, I get your baby.”

Baldr and Loki both froze in shock. This hadn’t been a part of the plan. But Loki took one look at Mödí and realised that if they didn’t get their audience with Frigga’s teachers, his little boy didn’t have a future at all… and there was **_no fucking way in any version of the Nine that may exist that he was going to let that horrid little bitch do what she’d done to Loki to Mödí_**!

“I accept.” Loki said, his voice cool and crisp like a summer storm.

.

A month in and not one sign of Hela’s domain. Nada.


	20. Chapter 20

They were ten minutes in to the game and it was **_not_** going well for Loki. The man he was playing was a rook and up, and all that Loki had left were pawns. He was **_fucked_**! He shot a glance at Mödí who yawned in Baldr’s anxious arms. Goodbye, love.

Loki moved his pawns coordinatedly in a fashion meant to ensure that at least one of them made it to the end. This was where the other man made his mistake: he got greedy. He wanted to take all of Loki’s remaining pawns first. Loki hid his smirk well. He moved his pawn to e7 and immediately he knew that the game was his. The man cursed. Yeah. Suck it.

Once Loki had promoted his pawn to a queen and won the game, the man finally relented. “Their cave is on the far east side in the Vanir Highlands. Travel north for a day and then head west. Not that you needed my help, they would have sought you ought anyways.” He turned to Mödí. “He is a beaut… a real shame it was, a real shame.”

“What? What was a real shame? Who are you?” Loki asked, angry and confused.

The man just smiled at him. “They call me Nereus.”

.

Of course a day into their trek it began to rain heavily. Loki groaned and rolled his eyes. Fuck the Norns.

He thought back to what that man had said. ‘They call me Nereus’, what was that even supposed to mean, dammit!? The only person he knew with a similar name was Njord. What, was Nereus like Baldr’s long-lost dad or something? It would make sense, the pair shared that same dopey smile. Mödí seemed to sense his mother’s bad mood because he started crying. Urgh, stupid baby!

“Shouldn’t you be like, uhm, feeding him or something?” Baldr asked, making motions at his own flat chest.

“He’s weaned. Mödí only eats semi-solids now.”

“Where would we find those?”

“Why, we ask a kind farmer for some barley and some milk and we mush them together.”

“Aren’t infants not supposed to drink cow’s milk?”

“It won’t kill him, at worse he’ll suffer a minor allergic reaction, at best he’ll be like ** _most_** children and it won’t affect him at all.” It certainly hadn’t affected Thor growing up. In hindsight, maybe Loki ought to have drunk more milk growing up.

“Where shall we take shelter?” Baldr asked.

“I know not. Mayhaps in that cave over there,” Loki pointed. It was hard to see, but if you squinted you could just barely make out a dark patch that looked like a cave entrance. Oh well, he supposed that they could do worse. And besides, it would be depressing if the Mighty Prince Mödí died as an infant from hypothermia or something like that.

They made their way to the cave and sat. Loki gathered some materials and used his seidr to start a fire to keep them warm.

“What is your plan, witch? What about your mother’s former tutors could possibly yield a clue as to how to cure Thor?”

“My mother was taught by the best seidrkonas in the Nine.” Loki said, reverently. “And recently someone else whom I met seemed to have been educated there as well. He was also incredibly powerful- he managed to kill the Fenris wolf.”

“Truly?”

“Aye.”

“What will Hela do once she finds out?”

“I assume that she knows, and that once she finds her beloved pet’s body she will reanimate her. Though I do not truly know if animals have souls like the rest of us, and therefore I do not know whether or not they are resurrectable.”

“If you have encountered such a powerful being, why is he not here fighting besides us?”

“I killed him.” Loki said calmly, simply, staring into the flames. His memories of those months still had yet to return properly. Loki feared that Heimdall was wrong in this situation. He hugged his knees. This was bad, this was very bad.

“Oh. Was he…?”

“Yes, he was.”

“I am sorry. I can only assume that you’d developed a close camaraderie with this man.”

Loki chuckled and then flashed his teeth menacingly. “Yes, I suppose that you could say that.”

.

When they awoke, there was a woman in the cave. She had lilac hair and big blue eyes, and wore a posh white fur cape around a light pink dress. She couldn’t have been older than 1100. “Princes Loki, Baldr and Mödí,” she smiled and gave a small bow. “We welcome you.”

“Who are you?” Loki asked, rubbing his eyes. And why had she called Baldr a prince?

She smirked. “My name is Skuld,” she said, her grin showing teeth. “And I am one of the three women you seek. The ladies who trained your mother. I have been sent to get you.”

“Sent? By who?”

“The other two. Now please, follow me.”

“Wait… are you a Norn?” Baldr asked, eyes wide.

“Yes, Baldr-prince, I am.”

“Why do you keep calling Baldr a prince?” Loki frowned, not trusting this lady one bit.

“Because he is the son of Odin and Frigga.”

Both Baldr and Loki’s eyes shot wide at that. “No,” Baldr protested. “My mother is Fulla!”

“Fulla was an old servant of your mother’s. During the war with the Frost Giants, Odin wasn’t certain that Asgard would win, and in the event that the royal family was killed, he wanted to ensure his succession, so when Frigga gave birth he gave you to Fulla and had her raise you. Frigga was heartbroken, but when the war was over, Odin brought you home, so at least she had something,” she’d turned to Loki at this point.

“That makes Baldr a legitimate prince of Asgard,” Loki breathed, before swallowing a gulp. Oh no, this couldn’t be good. A Norn was here calling Baldr a prince, that could only mean one thing: Thor was past the point of saving. They wanted for Loki to kill Thor, and for Baldr to take over as rightful King of Asgard. Loki wanted to burst into tears. All those times that he had tried to get rid of Thor… had been **_jokes_** , he didn’t actually want his brother dead, dammit!

But Baldr shook his head. “No. I want nothing to do with royal life. Regardless of who my biological parents are, my true parents will forever be Fulla and Robin, for they were the ones who raised me.”

Skuld smiled a skeleton’s smile and nodded her head. “Very well then, Baldr the Brave. Now come, the three of you. There is much that we need to discuss.”

.

On the way to the cave, all Loki could do was ask questions. For starters, how was Skuld weaving a clear patch directly over their heads to follow them.

“It is seidr, boy. Surely by now you know that its effects are limitless?”

“Who was that Nereus man?”

“Nereus? Oh, you ran into him? Why, he was Njord’s brother, cast out of the family. What did he want?”

“Mödí.”

“Oh. Poor guy must just be lonely.”

“Why was he cast out?”

“For sleeping with Njord’s daughter, Hilda.”

“I’ve never heard of her.” He frowned. He didn’t have an aunt Hilda.

“Yes, well, she died during childbirth. **_His_** child’s birth.”

“I thought the Vanir accepted incest.”

“She was underage.”

“Oh, I see.” He’d played chess with a child molester. How nice. Skuld seemed to sense his internal rhetoric.

“Hey, at least you won, right?”

“Right. Why do you have purple hair?”

“I like it that way.”

“Oh. Sure, I guess, it’s just…”

“Just?”

“I’d always pictured Norns to have more natural hair colours. You **_are_** beings of nature, aren’t you.”

“Honey, we’re **_all_** beings of nature. **_Everything_** is natural.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Anything else?”

“I just wasn’t expecting you to be so young.”

“That’s because I’m a **_Norn_**!”

“Wait, my mother trained with you, does that make her a Norn?”

“No, sweetie, you have to be born a Norn.”

They chatted for hours, all the while Baldr digested the information that he had been presented with. He was Frigga’s son, not Fulla’s… that meant that Loki had led the life destined for him. He took a peak at Mödí nestled in his mother’s arms and shook his head, he could only imagine how the baby was conceived. In all honesty, he was grateful that that hadn’t been him. He didn’t think that he could have survived Hela for over a year.

The cave thatSkuld was taking them to was rather high up, Baldr had to make sure that he didn’t trip over anything, the rocks were becoming nearer and nearer to one another, it was a difficult route to walk on. He glanced nervously at Loki, who was carrying Asgard’s future in his hands and walking candidly. If Mödí were to accidentally fall, then they were all fucked. Hela would win and there would be no point in living any longer.

The path became narrower too, and suddenly the peaceful hills turned to jagged points that reached for the sky as though they were sinners repenting. The sky which was now a purple-pink, misty, like in every fantasy movie ever where something was about to go very, **_very_** wrong, because they were almost in the villain’s lair. Baldr kept his focus on Mödí.

“We’re here,” Skuld called. Two women immediately emerged from the cave’s wide mouth to greet them.

One had long, wavy blonde hair and green eyes. She was beautiful, like a nymph in one of those tales from Olympus. Baldr looked at her and immediately knew that she was Urdr, for she could not be the ‘present’. No, that title would have to go to the haggard-looking girl with the black hair and dull eyes and grey robes covering her. **_Verdandi_** , he thought.

“I thought that the three of you were supposed to live by Urðarbrunnr,” Loki frowned.

“We used to, once, and we will once more when Ragnarok has come to completion,” Verdandi spoke, her voice hoarse.

“Ragnarok? But Ragnarok is over, isn’t it? It was what brought about Hela’s rule, rather than the golden age we were promised,”said Loki, bitterly.

“Nay, my boy,” spoke Urdr, her voice like sweet honey. “It has only just begun. Surtur has risen, yes, and was put to rest, but Ragnarok is not over. It is not over until the Midgard Serpent spreads his poison, and tThe Wolf devours hers…” her voicewas little more than a whisper.

“What?” Loki balked. “What Wolf? What Serpent?”

“Ragnarok is the last battle to be fought between the Giants and the Aesir…” Skuld sunk her claws into Loki’s arm then, leaning in close. “And what of you, boy? Did you feel the Nine shake? Quaking beneath the rumbling of The World Tree?”

“No- no, I didn’t.”

“Then Ragnarok is not over yet. The tree will move and adjust itself for the changes to come, but will then move back to its rightful place in Asgard, and every soul in the Nine, even those dead and paralysed, will feel its might.”

“What do you mean? The tree **_is_** on Asgard.”

“Take a closer look, boy,” Skuld pointed out of the cave mouth. It was a root. Loki moved to examine it closer, and saw that it led up. He ran out of the cave to take his first good, proper look at the top of the cave and saw it then and there, in all its misty glory, The World Tree.

“What must I do?” He breathed.

“Well, first of all, you are going to need help. You can not hope to win against your sister without Thor on your side.”

“How? How can I undo the curse?”

“You need the Sword of Truth, Gram.” Verdandi said, then. “It is wielded by the once-hero, Sigurd.”

“Sigurd,” the name tasted familiar. “I- nobody has seen him since before my birth. How do I even know whether he is alive or not?”

Urdr snorted. “Oh, he is alive alright. And he is gallivanting with our **_queen_** , who we would also like back, thank you.”

“Your queen? You have a queen?” Baldr was amazed that such powerful beings had any form of governance whatsoever.

“Yes, Karnilla. She is the Queen of the Norns.”

“Alright, we will retrieve the sword and bring you your queen back. Do you know where either are?”

“No,” was the simple response he got.

Sighing, he made to leave the cave, but he heard a cough behind him.

“We know that the road ahead is going to be treacherous, and perilous at times,” Loki didn’t like the way that Skuld’s eyes were latched onto Mödí. “We know that you might not want this, but it truly is for the best if Mödí stays with us.”

Loki faltered. “What? No.”

“Loki, think about this. You will be putting yourself in harm’s way on this journey. It will not be safe by any means, and Mödí is the future of Asgard.”

“He is _my_ ** _son_**.”

“He won’t be if he dies,” Verdandi said finally, firmly, sternly.“It is not something any new mother wants to do, giving up her young, but it is a necessity. You are a prince, your duty is to your people first.”

“Do not worry about leaving Mödí with us. We are used to caring for infants. We did raise your mother, after all.”

Loki turned to Baldr desperately, pleadingly then. He wanted the blond to say something, **_anything_** in his defence, but Baldr just turned to the women. “I can stay here, with you. I can keep the young prince safe.”

“Unfortunately, Prince Baldr, Prince Loki will require your assistance on this trek.”Urdr turned to Loki. “It is likely that you sill find Sigurd within a year or two, and then you will have your child back.”

“And if I do not?”

“Well, then his life will be in great peril, because Hela’s forces **_will_** find you one day, Prince Loki, and when that day arrives, believe me, you do not want to have your son with you.”

Loki paused, tears streaming down his face. “I need some time to think about this.”

“Takeall the time that you need.”


	21. Chapter 21

Loki slept on it, he did. And that night it seemed that every nightmare that had been waiting for its chance to creep up on him took a turn plaguing his mind.

_1._

_Loki was lying on his back, three months pregnant with Mödí. He was in the palace, back on the bed that Hela and Thor had_ **_so graciously_ ** _gifted to him, the red canopy above him. He rubbed the bump with both fondness and dread. Fondness for the child, and dread with what was to become of it. His eyes closed, just a brief moment or two. He felt a sudden sharp piercing feeling on his stomach, and opened his eyes immediately. Hela stood before him, a wicked grin on her face, and a bloody newborn baby Mödí held haphazardly in her right hand. His (Loki’s) stomach was open, and all of his innards were on display. He must have just given birth again._

_“He will never replace mine,” she dropped Mödí into a deep cavernous pit that had materialised onto the space next to him. The last thing he heard was Hela’s laughter accompanying Mödí’s wail, and then everything went black._

_2._

_A tall man stood before him, on a bed crop not unlike the one Odin had passed away on. He was muscular and huge._

_‘Thor,’ Loki thought._

_But when the man turned to face him, Loki realised that his eyes were more steely than Thor’s- even the new possessed Thor. And come to think of it, his face was just the slightest bit more angular, and also he didn’t wear what Thor wore: he wore a black catsuit with a purple cape rather than Thor’s traditional red and blue cum black and blue. And also, he had two eyes, so there was that._

_“Jotunn scum!” He hissed, and Loki knew immediately that it was Mödí, for no other’s words could affect him so._

_“My son,” Loki breathed, trying to make his way towards him. But nothing happened, no matter how much he ran the distance between them never closed. And just as well, for the look in Mödí’s eyes was mutinous._

_“All hail Hela!” Mödí spat, and then Loki was engulfed in fire, and his son was gone. Loki stood, staring at the charred area, it was all ruined, and it was all that he had left._

_3._

_Angrboda was leaning over him, kissing his inner thighs._

_“Ssh, relax, I’ll take good care of you,” he promised, but his eyes glowed a fever red and Loki shuddered._

_He couldn’t help but squirm in agitation. He wasn’t so sure he wanted this. In all honesty, after the horrors that Hela and Thor had inflicted upon his body, Loki was content being celibate, but Angrboda kept insisting, and he felt bad for denying the man who had helped him so much. And besides, he couldn’t deny, there was something erotic about being taught dark-seidr._

_“I- no, can we-”_

_“Hush!” Angrboda commanded, and Loki did just that as Angrboda spread him out on the bed. “Don’t worry,” Angrboda promised with that feral grin of his, spreading Loki’s legs for access. “I’ll take it slow, I’ll take good care of you, you won’t even remember what happened.”_

_What happened._

_What_ **_happened_ ** _…_

_What- what happened?_

_4._

_A whir of colours enveloped Loki and he felt himself being dragged down. The feeling was surreal, like being dragged through the earth and all of its layers, except without any harm to him. It wasn’t like falling through a pit though, the feeling was too textured for that. Nor water, because pressure didn’t increase as he went deeper and deeper._

_Around it he saw scenes of things he had no recollection ever witnessing. There was a man with a dreadlocks and shades over his eyes. A voice in his head supplied ‘Sigurd the Everglorious’. In another picture he was with two beautiful women. One had dark hair and one light brown. Loki immediately recognised the one with lighter hair as Lorelei (whom nobody had seen in a century, since Odin exiled her for trying to seduce Thor one too many times), for some reason. The other one must be Karnilla. They were out drinking champagne, it was on Midgard._

_The next photo showed them out fishing, he vaguely recognised the area as being close to New York, the area that he had attacked._

_Then another showed them on what he thought was most likely Vanaheim, fighting a group of, probably, pirates._

_The last Sigurd alone in a cabin watching TV with beer out. He saw the sword, Gram, with him, but he had no idea which planet he was on, he could be anywhere in the Nine or even beyond that!_

_5._

_The world was burning, and there stood Hela before him, cackling maniacally. He felt a weight in his hands and there was Gram, in all of its gold and silver glory. She lunged at him, shadows spawning from her hair, from him his stomach leapt forth a wolf and a snake. He watched in horror as they tore the world apart, leaving Loki in whiteness and a baby cried and he didn’t recognise the child who was crying and-_

Loki woke up, sweating and panting and feeling an urge to bend over and dry-heave. Once the spell had passed he picked up his sleeping infant and kissed him on the head. He knew what he had to do.

.

“It really is the wise choice,” Verdandi assured. “And you will be free to take him once Gram has been found, or whenever you see fit.”

“It’s just long-term babysitting is all,” Urdr, stroked Loki’s back. She truly was the more matronly of the three.

“And besides, you won’t be alone long,” Skuld patted Loki’s belly.

Loki froze. Baldr did a spit-take of the water he had been drinking.

“But-but **_how_** \- how can I be-?”

“Almost a month pregnant?” Verdandi giggled, a strange noise from such an ominous figure. “You **_did_** eat the giant’s heart.”

“Yes, and I received his powers for it.”

“Silly boy, everything comes with a price. You ate his heart and now you carry his young.”

“But-but that’s not how reproduction works!”

“Seidr is not about science, it is about fate and the ways in which we manipulate it.” She then bowed before Loki’s apparently pregnant stomach. “All hail the mother of monsters, the bearer of the bringers of Ragnarok.”

“All hail!” The other two repeated. Loki was seriously annoyed. Was it really such a good idea to leave his infant son with these crazy people?”

“You carry within you the World Serpent and The Great Wolf. They will fight for your cause, for you are their mother.”

“When shall they be born?” Loki grumbled. He had no idea what the gestation period was for snakes and wolves.

“By the next month’s end,” Urdr prophesied. “But you will have to sit on the snake’s egg to keep him warm.”

“Alright, fine,” Loki grumbled. “Come, Baldr, let us go.”

“Wait!” Skuld called. She ran to them and dropped a pebble. “We may not know where Sigurd is, but this stone can track Gram to the nearest 100000 km2, so that you do not need to search through every place thoroughly, and so that you can save time.”

“I thank you, kind maidens. I shall take my leave now.”

“Good luck.” They all said at once, and as Baldr and Loki left, the mouth of the cave shut itself, and with it shut Mödí inside.

“Do not worry, my prince,” Baldr said, trying to keep spirits up. “If anything, this is merely further incentive to get the curse out of Thor as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, Baldr, aye.” Loki’s heart ached. Mödí didn’t even have the ability to understand that his mother was gone.

.

“Perhaps the way into Hel isn’t through Niffleheim,” one of Sindr’s servants proposed.

“What do you mean?” She asked, voice stern as ever.

“I mean that even though it is located here, perhaps the portal is somewhere else. Somewhere that Queen Hela would have had an easier time accessing?”

Of course! Why hadn’t Sindr thought of it sooner!?

“Men! Hark! We march to Asgard on the morrow!”

This announcement was greeted with cheers. She smiled. She couldn’t wait to tear that bitch Hela down. Nobody messes with King Surtur but Queen Sindr.


	22. Chapter 22

They started on Midgard, because that was one of the places that Loki had seen in his dream. The stone didn’t glow. Unfortunately, with Loki pregnant as he was, he couldn’t shapeshift.

“Aren’t you banned from here or something?” Baldr questioned, raising a brow.

“Yes, technically, but I assume that the Midgard Sorcerer is unwilling to use his tricks on me while I am pregnant.”

“You assume correctly,” Dr. Strange said, stepping out of seemingly nowhere. “Now what is it that you want this time?”

“We are looking for Sigurd the Everglorious.” Loki explained. “We need him in our fight against Hela.”

“Asgardian, is he?”

“Yes.”

Strange rubbed his chin. “There was an Asgardian here a few months ago, but he’s since left. I do not know where to, but he’s not on earth.”

“Thank you, we shall leave.” Loki turned.

“Wait,” and internally, Strange groaned. “You’re… pregnant. Maybe not a good time to go realm hopping.”

“There is no time to waste.”

“Trust me, it won’t be a waste of your time to not physically and mentally exhaust yourself further while pregnant.” Strange deadpanned. “You will, of course, be staying in the Sanctuary with me, but I can not ethically allow you out into the universe while you’re pregnant. It’s not safe at the moment, in case you haven’t noticed… and besides, I can tell that these children are important.”

“Alright, if you insist, but just until they are born… I have a feeling that neither will be in need of me for too long.”

“Good. And besides, that Sigurd guy might come back around. Come on, the Sanctuary’s that way.” Strange pointed and began to walk. Loki and Baldr followed. Wow, Loki never thought that he would be going along with something that this want-to-be magician suggested, but he supposed that desperate times called for desperate measures.

.

They were halfway up the mountain, which was pretty good. Hela smiled, they were exhausting the opposition’s forces, this was excellent. 

And then, just like that, a giant avalanche knocked them back down. At the front of it was a huge Frost Giant, carrying the snow down with him. It was Beli, and he was ready to die for his land.

Hela roared and Thor sent bold after bolt of lightning at the Frost Giant, but he didn’t quake. Instead he stood his ground and made swipes at the Aesir trying to fight him, smacking them about and causing them serious injuries that would undoubtedly take a while to heal properly. Hela growled as Thor shot fought the beast. The men were beginning to lose morale. She couldn’t send them home, or they would lose the position that they had worked so long to get. Perhaps she could have some of Asgard’s families be brought to the mountain? This place was shrouded in seidr, but she could have Skurge drop the people off ten kilometres away or something and then she could have someone bring them back?

“Stay here, handle this, I will be back by the day’s end,” she told an Einherjer.

.

Hela spent three days trying to summon Skurge. She cursed. Either that idiot fool was flirting with girls in vain again, or the Jotnar mages had managed to obscure the entire planet!… knowing her luck, it was likely both. 

.

Fulla smirked, holding Hela’s baby girl. How disappointingly easy it had been to disguise herself as a palace servant and be trusted as Hel’s nanny. Her allegiance was and would always be to her Lady Frigga. She just needed to get herself and Hel out of Asgard without any of Hela’s agents discovering her. It was difficult given the amount of guard detail on the palace- one would think that it would be less heavy what with the war going on, but somehow it was even worse, with Einherjer flanking every exit. She just needed an opportunity was all, really. Just the one, and she’d be out into the Nine with this child and Hela would never see her again.

.

The Sanctum Sanctorum was boring as fuck for a place rife with magic. Loki scoffed every time that Strange used his faux-sorcery. What an amateur. If Loki weren’t pregnant, he would challenge him to a duel. And it didn’t help that Strange couldn’t stop asking about Thor.

“Where is your brother?”

“He is campaigning in Jotunheimr.”

“Isn’t that where you are from?”

“Yes.”

“Why is he doing it?”

“Our sister came back from the dead and spelled him into it.”

“Oh, I see. Have you seen him recently?”

“Not in over a year.”

“Ah.”

The man was so clinical. Norns, didn’t he have something else to do!?

Baldr seemed taken by the place, but Baldr was a half-wit, so who cared what he was taken by? Loki grit his teeth and stared at one of Strange’s fish. He’d done a month, 28 more days to go. Urgh!

.

Sindr smirked. In two days her troops would lay siege upon Asgard. She licked her smouldering lips, revenge tasted sweet. She couldn’t wait to avenge her father.


	23. Chapter 23

When the time came for Loki to give birth (again) he was enjoying a nice, luxurious dip in one of Strange’s many, _many_ bathtubs. Gah, damn this blasted man and his over-furnished house! And that blasted animated rug he wore as a cape- it was _ugly_!

But hey, at least there was… some stuff to do. He supposed that the word ‘some’ was being a bit too generous. Loki had tried sneaking out of the Sanctum several times, and each attempt was thwarted by that melted ken-doll!

Apparently he couldn’t leave because he was seen as a ‘danger to society’ or something like that, and Stark had vowed to Strange that if he saw Loki he’d shoot him down. Ouch.

Anyways, after fifteen hours of gruelling labour, out popped an egg (don’t even ask, because it wasn’t pretty) and a tiny wolf pup. The look on Strange’s face was worth it all, at least Baldr had been warned. When it was over, Loki could shape-shift once more and he was grateful for it. That was until he realised that wolf pups were mammals and that he’d need to sit on the egg while breastfeeding the mammal. _Urgh_. Mammals.

Secretly though, he was thrilled. He didn’t want to admit it, because deep down he was afraid of what the future may hold, but he loved these kids, maybe not as much as Mödí (which broke his heart because weren’t parents supposed to love all of their children equally?), but nevertheless he loved them.

Strangely enough, Strange offered them his home for another two months, just until Loki got back on his feet. Loki was grateful to the strange man for it. Baldr was allowed into the free world. Hm, the one place where Baldr was more popular than Loki was. Interesting. Must just be a fluke.

The boredom he felt left him with time to think about the past, the present and the future. The past was obscure as ever. He couldn’t quite put his hand on it, but something was holding his memories back. Maybe it was just trauma? It felt like trauma. Maybe it was his own seidr, and he didn’t blame it; with everything that he had been through in the past two years, he was certain that the moment that he had a proper opportunity to dwell on those memories, he’d wind up mentally crippling himself, maybe physically too if insanity overtook him.

Then there was the present, his current situation. Well, there wasn’t much to think about here. He had two of his children with him, both of whom were clearly key in bringing about Ragnarok. He’d had a hard time believing, at first, that two beings as innocent as the ones whom he had birthed were to have any part in the final battle between the Giants and the Gods… but then Fenrir was bigger than him a month into being born. Yeah, that’s right, he named him Fenrir. He didn’t know, it just suited the little tyke. And he named the egg Jormungandr ‘huge monster’ just because, well, why not? He knew it was to be a snake, and if it took after his brother… well…

Jormungandr hatched the day before they planned to leave. Well, ‘hatched’ wasn’t the right word. He slithered out from the egg, scaly green head first. It was truly magical to watch a five kilometre long, three metres wide snake slither out of a tiny egg that Loki had housed inside of his body.

“Well we can’t bring him along!” Baldr exclaimed, looking up a the snake. “Either of them, really.”

“What choice do we have? There is nowhere else to safely store them.”

Strange sighed in that ‘I am the protector of this timeline and also I am _so_ much better than you’ way of his. “We can keep Jormungandr in the ocean, and we can put Fenrir in Australia. Nobody will suspect anything soon, but just _hurry_ before your progeny eats us out of house and home.”

“That is very kind of you,” Baldr covered Loki’s mouth, which had undoubtedly opened to spit venom at Strange. “We shall take our leave now, friend Strange. We shall be back soon.”

“Pleasure, Baldr. Bye, Loki. Also, my sources tell me that that Sigurd of yours was last spotted on Svartalfheim.”

“Thank you!” He closed the door and only let go of Loki when they were out on the streets. “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

“Speak for yourself!” Loki grumbled, tears in his eyes. “I just lost two more children!”

“Loki, they were barely Asgardian. I highly doubt that a snake and a wolf qualify as children.” Baldr rolled his eyes.

Baldr… should not have voiced those opinions out loud. Moments later, Loki was shrieking ‘how dare you!?’ At a mouse. Wow, he hadn’t remembered the man being this talented at seidr. He remembered Loki being able to transform himself and inanimate objects, but never other people.

Finally, when Loki was done being angry, he flicked his fingers and they were in Svartalfheim. He could **_teleport_**!? Baldr squeaked. Okay, he understood how crass his words must’ve sounded, but surely Loki realised that there was truth to his words, right? This wasn’t about being humanitarian, this was about being practical. Loki began walking away. Baldr squeaked and scurried after him, his tail flicking out behind him.

.

They had yet to recover what distance Beli had taken from them, though they had his dead corpse as meat for their dogs and lions, so that wasfortunate. It was taking more and more effort to bring back their dead with how frequently everybody was dying. Hela’s body felt the toll of it.

“Love, maybe you should go back to Asgard for a week or two and rest? You can play with Hel.”

“Shut up, Thor.”

“OK.”

That summarised most of the pair’s conversations nowadays. If Loki were around he’d be grinning from ear-to-ear mouthing ‘trouble in paradise’, but he wasn’t there and therefore we have no definitive way of proving it.

.

“My liege, we are running out of supplies,” A Dark Elf by the name of Joyce told her king.

“Blast! What is happening to them?”

“The Asgardian forces are destroying all incoming forces.”

“What!? And why am I only learning of this now?”

“My liege, we only found out this morning when we discovered a trail of them with arrows in their neck.”

Malekith swore. “Well we may as well be doing the same to them. You, Veronica and Louise go out and slaughter as many Asgardian peace-soldiers as you can!”

Right away, my liege.

.

Loki’s legs hurt. Loathe as he was to admit it, it still greatly drained him when doing cross-planetary seidr. As a result of his overuse of seidr, he’d spent the entire day walking around. He had it planned, Svartalfheim wasn’t the most habitable of places. In fact, the only area one could inhabit without dying straight away was the centre. So he just transformed into a bird and flew around a locus of predetermined points to see if the stone would glow.

He shot a look at the mouse beside him, groaned, laid back, and clicked his fingers. Baldr hit the ground with a thud, having lost his balance on accord of not expecting to suddenly be turned back into a real boy by your vindictive foster-brother.

“Thank you!” Baldr squeaked. Loki shot him a look that shut him up. After a moment though, Baldr couldn’t help himself. “Are you sure that Sigurd wouldn’t go to the uninhabitable areas of Svartalfheim just for adventure?”

“No. I mean yes, I’m sure that he _wouldn’t_. For whatever reason, Sigurd chose to leave it all behind. Besides, from the looks of it, he’s travelling with Karnilla and Lorelei.” At Baldr’s raised brow, he elaborated. “I-I saw it in a dream. He’s travelling with them.”

“I’m surprised he let Lorelei in after she was banned from Asgard.”

“Yeah,” Loki chuckled and then froze, eyes wide open. “You don’t think that Odin banished him for something, do you?”

“I don’t know, nobody ever talks about him.” Baldr sighed and rolled his eyes. “I mean, I suppose it _is_ suspicious that Asgard’s First Hero went ‘missing’ and nobody ever looked for him.”

“I heard a rumour once… that he was Heimdall’s older brother.”

“I heard once that he was Heimdall’s _younger_ brother.”

“How old is Heimdall anyways?”

“As old as The Nine, some say. He did have nine mothers.”

“Aye… I’ll never understand how that worked out.”

“You’re the one with seidr.”

Loki chuckled. Baldr looked uncomfortable. “Um, Loki,” the man said, blushing heavily, “About that comment I made earlier… I didn’t mean it like that, and now I’m not so sure that I mean it at all. I was impatient and acted insensitively to what was undoubtedly traumatic for you to go through. I apologise for it. A child is a child, be he in wolf’s skin or in Aesir’s skin.”

Loki waved his hand. “No, the truth was that it _was_ easier for me to let go of Fenrir and Jormungandr than it was for me to let go of Mödí. I don’t know… maybe it’s because I saw myself needing to say goodbye to them even before they were born, whereas Mödí’s crept up on me…. I certainly hope so, because the alternative is that I’m a bad mother… I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this, in all honesty.”

Baldr shrugged. “I have that affect on people… and for what its worth, I don’t think that you’re a bad mother… I think, given everything that’s happened to you over the past two years, it was only a matter of time before you ran out of feelings… it’s perfectly healthy, I think. I think that if you felt anymore trauma you’d go off. You’ve been through a lot, Loki, don’t bum yourself out on it. And besides, Fenrir and Jormungandr were your progeny with Angrboda… Mödí was your son with Thor.” That word, that damned word. Fucking ‘Thor’. Loki’s floodgates were open and he broke down sobbing.

“What if-what if we never fix him? What if the Norns intend for us to kill him in truth? I have heard of the Truth Sword, but it is still a sword, a weapon in its own right.”

“Hey, shh… it’s going to be okay. And there _has_ to be a way to fix Thor, or Frigga herself would rise from the dead to claw Hela apart,” Baldr soothed, hugging Loki.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you doing any of this?” Loki sniffed, rubbing his aching nose.

“In all honesty? Up until two months ago, I’d spent my entire life thinking that you and Thor were my half-brothers, that it was my responsibility to protect you… and even now, with my heritage known, it just… it doesn’t feel different. Like, obviously it should be, but its not… I am, regardless of my parentage, Fulla’s son, and I don’t think that that needs to change, and honestly I don’t want it to.”

“What are you proposing?” Loki asked the man, quizzical.

“Just don’t tell anyone, okay? At the end of this, at the end of these days, I still want to be known as Baldr the Brave, not Baldr Odinson or Baldr Thor-and-Loki’s-brother. Alright?”

Loki nodded. “I respect your wish… but you have to be Mödí’s godfather.”

“What? Why me?” Baldr asked, startled but not entirely averse to the idea.

“He responds well to you… and because you are, genetically, Frigga’s son… there is not a person in the Nine whom I would trust more.”

“Hela is Frigga’s daughter,” Baldr pointed out, smirking.

“And damn her right back to Hel,” Loki swore, rubbing his temples. Crying always made his head hurt. He was going to call it in early for the night.

.

“Fire!” Sindr roared, grinning.


	24. Chapter 24

Long story short: Sigurd was not on Svartalfheim. Good, Loki thought, he didn’t want to stick around this place any longer than necessary. To be entirely honesty, he wasn’t too keen on going to Niflheim either. That was where the entrance to Hela’s realm was, after all. He didn’t want to be around anything to do with that psychotic bitch.

Baldr was much more companionable in his human form. Loki had missed teasing him.

“So what’s the deal with the other one?” At Loki’s raised brow, Baldr elaborated. “Karnilla, I mean. We _know_ who Lorelei is, but we don’t know anything about the Norn Queen.”

Loki hummed. “I do not know,” he admitted, “but whomever she is, she must be powerful if she rules over all of the Norns.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And the other three seemed pretty desperate… I can’t help but wonder if she is missed.”

“She is their queen,” Baldr frowned. “Rulers are always missed.”

“Yes, but… why wait until now? I mean, she must have been missing for a while, I’ve never heard of her. Why are they so desperate now?”

“Who is to say that they have not tried before to find her?”

Loki didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe that for one second. Norns were crafty creatures- he would know, he’d dated two previously: Jord and Filia- if they’d tried to find her at all, she would have been found. Something was going on. Were the Norns in disagreement? They were the weavers of fate (as was anyone, technically, who wielded seidr), what if they were having trouble deciding the outcome of Ragnarok or something? The effects of that could be catastrophic for the Aesir! Loki kept this to himself, Baldr was a worry-wart, he would panic and jeopardise their whole operation.

“There is something suspicious,” he said, finally. “Something that we are not being told.”

“Well of course, Loki, they are the weavers of fate, they tell us what we want. We are but pawns in a larger game.”

Loki chuckled. “You may be a pawn, young Baldr, but I am more of a rook, I believe.”

Baldr snorted. “You? Given your powers I’d be more inclined to put you down as a queen.”

Loki pretended that the statement didn’t make him freeze. He pretended that there were no shivers running down his spine. He pretended to laugh at Baldr’s statement.

_Our_ child. He hadn’t even thought about what would happen when this was all over, and yet the word ‘queen’ had sent more anxiety coursing through Loki than even leaving Mödí with the Norns. There was cause for concern there. There was no telling whether Thor would remember any of this once it was all over. If he did, he would never be able to forgive himself, and would undoubtedly see each of his sexual encounters with Loki as though Loki were the only one being raped through them. It he _didn’t_ remember anything, what then? Surely somebody would end up telling him enough for him to work out the rest. After all, what was Loki to say? ‘Thor, look, I had a kid with Fandral.’ No, Mödí, even as an infant, looked far too much like Thor for a lie like that to pas… hmmm… ‘Thor, look, Baldr, our long-lost brother, and I have had a child together!’… he’d have to go over that one with Baldr. If Baldr cared as much for him and Thor as he claimed to, then surely he wouldn’t mind going through with the lie. Maybe he could pass Mödí off as Tyr’s kid? No, Thor took after Frigga, not Odin… uncle Freyr’s kid? Actually… that one could work.

“What are you thinking about?” Baldr’s voice pulled him from his mind.

“The aftermath of all of this… do you think that Thor will remember anything?”

“I hope not. He’d blame himself, even though it’s not his fault… is it his fault?”

“No, no!” Loki sighed. “What Hela did to him is _almost_ mind-control, but it’s definitely mental distortion.” At Baldr’s confused look, he elaborated. “She can’t control his _actual_ thoughts and actions, but she can control how he perceives things and has placed a spell on him that ensures that his more negative attributes will control how he feels and acts on what he sees.”

“Ah.” Baldr didn’t look any less confused.

“It would be like if a child hit you, right? You would, in your normal state, see it as an accident, or regard it as inconsequential. But with the right spell, I could make you view the child as the enemy, or simply have you act in a way that promotes your angrier side. Then, instead of leaving the child be or telling him off, you would lash out and maybe kick the child or something. But _I_ didn’t tell you to do that, you did it yourself, I just set up a system where all outcomes would have worked to my intended favour, but you chose the action all on your own.”

“Wait, so is it his fault or not?” Baldr frowned.

“It’s not. He’s being influenced by that bitch.”

“Alright then.” Baldr still didn’t get it. Urgh, fine, who cared anyways, it wasn’t like Baldr was important.

.

The castle was on fire, and Fulla used this as her opportunity to get Hel the hell out of there. Shebundled the baby girl up in a swaddle and made a break for it. She ran and ran and ran. All around her she heard shouting and screaming and wailing and commands being barked out. Sindr’s forces were attacking Asgard, she had managed to gather, and she was using this as her opportunity to get the heck out of dodge.

She ran down a tunnel and out onto the city where chaos reigned supreme. Everything was on fire, it looked like a scene out of a tragic play. The smoke left her disoriented, the heat getting to her head, and the sounds of screaming and wailing not helping much either. Steadying herself, she took a left and made a mad sprint. It seemed the least burned so surely, _surely,_ Sindr couldn’t be there yet. The daughter of Surtr’s presence would have turned that area to ash the moment that she had set foot there.

Fulla ran and ran and ran and then was knocked down onto her feet. Before she could even register what was happening, someone was dragging her to her feet.

“Asgardian,” a voice snarled. “Kill her!”

“She has a child!” Another voice interjected. “You would be so cruel as to rob a child of their mother?”

“Kill the child too!”

“Nay! Our fight here is not with her, we are here to find the portal. Leave her be and let us continue.”

“What is your name, woman?” The first voice ignored the second entirely, reaching a blazing hand down to grip her shirt collar.

“Fulla, Fulla of the Brave Hearts.” Fulla replied, scared out of her wits.

“And the child?”

“Melinome. Please, leave me and my daughter be. Please, I beg you.”

“Grr!” That second voice was getting fed-up. “You know it’s a war crime, right? To kill an innocent civilian who _isn’t_ collateral damage.”

“Who said she wasn’t collateral?” The man smirked.

“I will report you to her Highness. You know how she feels about stray soldiers.”

The mangrowled. “Fine, we’ll leave the whore. I hope that wherever her husband is he is burning on a pike with the rest of her children.” And then he left along with the other fire demon.

Fulla gasped, pained by both the language used and the closeness that she had come to death. Her neck was singed with probably second or third degree burns, but she didn’t care, she needed to get out. All of a sudden bright white light enveloped her. She closed her eyes. Within a moment, there stood no-one in that empty grass field, just a black patch in the shape of ancient norse runes that were too ancient for even Heimdall himself to know.

.

“My queen!” One of Hela’s mercenaries called, an envoy who had managed to find a portal to Asgard, their only line to get back home. “My queen, Asgard is under siege!”

“What?” Hela balked, “What do you mean!?”

“Sindr, her forces have arrived and burned the place to the ground.” Hel. Hela growled, she was the goddess of death, she did not fear death in the slightest, not even that of her daughter, for she could simply bring her back… but what if they didn’t kill her? What if they kidnapped her or something much, much worse, like dismembering her and scattering her? Hela could bring people back from the death, but she couldn’t do it to someone who had been dismembered, not unless they were willing to go through life with whatever was missing.

“What did he just say?” Thor popped up next to Hel. His eyes were frantic. “Wife, I must go and protect our daughter.”

“I shall come too. Man the fort, we’re going to go kill a bunch of fire people.” Hela growled, murder written across her face.


	25. Chapter 25

It has been several (two, I believe) chapters since we last saw the young prince, the epicentre of everything going on. It is time that we checked in on him.

Mödí mouthed at his right fist and kicked his little feet half-heartedly. The Norns cooed.

Let’s check in with Loki.

.

Niffleheim was as cold and barren as ever. Loki had been here _twice_ before, and both times were with Thor. He blushed at the thought that he might be more on edge because his big brother wasn’t here to protect him. That was preposterous. As a youth, he did not know that Hela’s realm lurked here, let alone who Hela was. Had he known what he knew now, he would have stayed as far away from Niffleheim as was godly possible.

Baldr looked around the place wearily. There was something unsettling about the area. Unlike with Svartalfheim, Loki didn’t know this area well enough to traverse it solo for a day and declare that Sigurd was no longer on the planet. That was if he’d ever come here. Baldr wasn’t so sure that anybody would come here of their own free will. He voiced this opinion to Loki.

“Mayhaps he didn’t. An ex-Asgardian renegade roving space, he likely made his fair share of enemies. After all, many in the Nine aren’t fond of what my sister and father did to their lands, but they can’t act on it due to their fear of repercussions from Asgard and her allies. If an Asgardian was no longer protected with Aesir status…

“Then they would be the perfect outlet for some miserable person’s frustrations,” Baldr finished the thought.

“Exactly… and besides, this place isn’t the worst. Thor and I have been by a few times.”

“Both were unavoidable detours on missions set to you by Odin,” Baldr deadpanned. He wasn’t going to let Loki bullshit him, Baldr had heard _everything_ from Fulla. She had been so relieved that the pair of idiots hadn’t gotten themselves killed, or Baldr would have been forced onto the throne and she would have lost her baby boy. Or, well, relieved more that Thor didn’t die. Like it or not, Odin probably _wouldn’t_ have allowed somebody not of his blood to inherit the throne of Asgard. And even if he did, there were complications: after all, could one of Frost Giant descent even inherit the Odinforce?

“Fair, but we did still take a few strolls down some meadows, we even burnt a house down. It was great fun.”

“And did you conquer a village too? Make them worship you as kings?” Baldr mocked.

“We do that **_one time_** and you hold it over us for life,” Loki fumed.

“It was more than once.”

“Five. **_Five times_**!” Yeah, sure, Baldr snorted. Five times that were made public. Midgardians were true idiots.

“I don’t know how Odin didn’t banish Thor to Midgard sooner.”

“I guess he didn’t want to be a hypocrite,” Loki said suddenly, his voice sober. “And I suppose we didn’t get into too much trouble. We burnt down a few houses, but we didn’t kill anyone or start any wars.”

Baldr nodded, eying Loki warily. The man was keeping something inside. Again. This could not be good. The last time that he had seen that look on Loki’s face, the man wound up helping Frost Giants invade Asgard, and look at where that had led them.

“But still, I doubt that Sigurd would come here willingly. Especially if he was with two women, as you said,” Baldr pointed out, taking the conversation back to from before it had strayed.

“You never know. Lorelei was a pest, but she liked to rough it more than Amora did. And, I mean, if they’re all living the renegade lifestyle, then I think that Niffleheim with its seedy bars and dubious streets is as good a place as any to settle.”

“I suppose that you are right.”

“Of course I am. Now come on, the fast that we find this bloody bastard, the sooner that I can get at least _one_ of my children back.”

“Aye.”

.

Hela stalked the castle, an air of murder about her. She was going to turn Sindr into a pile of ash. Thor was beside her, they’d do it together.

She had no doubt that that mutinous Loki was behind all of this. It was unlikely that Sindr, foolish as she was, would have thought of such a harebrained scheme on her own. No matter.

Einherjer swarmed the area on her command, ready to take out any moving figures. She walked, her pace quite fast, to her daughter’s room. Breathe Hela, breathe, she felt the anxiety creep in. She opened the door. The room was burnt, nobody was in it… not even a body. Hela screamed in fury. “They’ve taken her, they’ve taken her! I want every last one of them found and killed! Do it! _Do it_!” She screamed at the top of her lungs to the Einherjer who were unfortunate enough to be around her. She felt Thor’s comforting hand on her back.

“Do not worry, my queen, we will be sure to find our sweetest Hel by the day’s end.”


	26. Chapter 26

Heimdall greeted Fulla first.

"I take it that that is Hela’s daughter,” he hummed.

“Aye.”

“Why bring her here?”

“She is Hela’s greatest weapon, is she not? You know the saying, the child is more powerful than the parent.”

“Aye, but how are you sure that Hela’s DNA hasn’t corrupted the child beyond saving. Need I remind you that Thor was under a spell when she was conceived?”

“As was he when Mödí was conceived,” Fulla reminded Heimdall. “And whether or not you will admit it, you see Loki and Hela as being equally bad.”

“I do indeed view the young prince as a threat… but he is a controlled threat, and not our foremost concern, that would be Odin’s eldest.”

“I see.”

Heimdall sighed. “You know that they will come looking for her, surely. That Hela has dark magicks at her disposal.”

“She can’t track her without an object belonging to her, and the entire room has been burnt to a crisp.”

Heimdall swore. “Look, Fulla, I appreciate your effort and your loyalty to the cause, but it is too risky to keep her here, OK? If you want to try it your way, then that is fine, but if Hela does find us here because of her a lot of people will die. You want to keep her, OK, but you need to leave.”

Taking a shaky breath, Fulla nodded. She turned to leave.

“You know, your brother thought that all people could be saved,” she said, as she made her way out.

“And look where that led him.”

.

Loki’s feet were tired, again.

“Couldn’t you transform yourself into a cheetah? You’d move faster,” Baldr pointed out.

“Knowing the locals, they’d hunt me down.”

“What about a bird again?”

“And who would be here to protect you when those cannibals come out here thirsty for blood.” Loki rolled his eyes.

“This is a waste of time, why on earth would a hero waste his time in this rotten hellhole.”

“Mayhaps he was banished to here?”

“You said yourself that you saw him in other realms.”

There was no winning an argument with Baldr. Seriously though, was it Baldr the Brave of Baldr the Argumentative?

“Well, we can’t be certain that they are not here unless we look, now quit your whining.”

.

Mödí was eight months of age.

.

Thor had torn apart what remained of Asgard in his search for Sindr’s troops. They would know where his daughter was.

Not a problem, however. Because they were winning their battle with the Frost Giants and would enslave them to rebuild their empire as soon as all was said and done. He highly doubted that the fighting would take longer than a decade or two. Definitely not a half century, no, that would be far too long, especially given how they were inching up on them.

.

Aishida waved her hand and all the seidr weilders in the Nine _not_ on Hela’s side sent Giant Snowball after Giant Snowball down to reign on the Asgardian troops. Take that, bitch.

.

Sindr had found no trace of Helheimr anywhere on Asgard. Dammit.

.

Once Hela was certain that all essential prisoners were under lock and key (Sindr had not made it into the Dungeons, it had seemed. Not that that would have helped her, she kept her bait locked up in special quarters where nobody would ever find them) she walked into Odin’s Weapons Vault. Most of the weapons had been destroyed during the siege of Asgard, but not all. After all, you could not destroy an infinity stone. Not through any physical means, anyways.

She loomed around the room. No sign of it… what? Did that mean that somebody had stolen it? Was that how Sindr had managed entry into Asgard? She was going to kill whoever did it for endangering the lives of her child and her people!

It _must_ have been the runt! How else had he been able to escape? Grrr, when this was all over she was going to send his soul into the deepest part of Hel from which it would never emerge. Try getting out of that one, Loki.

.

It took about a month to conclude that Sigurd was, in fact, _not_ on Niflheim.

“Isn’t Hel supposed to intersect with this realm?” Baldr asked Loki.

“It is, but you need a dead soul to guide you there.”

“Like an Aesir sacrifice?”

“Sure, or you could just wait and follow one. You’d know that you were in the right area when you start seeing souls coming. You wouldn’t be able to physically witness a soul elsewhere.”

“How do you know so much about Hel?”

“I’ve been here, once.” Loki said, his voice unusually soft. “On a mission… the-The Other sent me here.”

“Who?”

“A man who worked for Thanos. Or with Thanos. Maybe Thanos even worked for him? Who knows, certainly not me they likely reasoned that the less I knew about them, the easier it would be to control me. No weapons at my disposal.”

“So why did this man- or thing- send you here?”

“There was a girl… Willowquin. She had important information, or so he said.”

“Oh, you believe he had ulterior motives?”

“I think that she was someone very dear to him, and he took advantage of his dominion over me. Anyways, I followed a soul to the cave where she was waiting, because they _can_ control whether they go in or not, and I brought her back with me.”

“You defied death!? Wow, no wonder Hela hates you.”

Loki chuckled. “Hela hates me for scores of reasons, not the least of which is that to the best of her knowledge, Odin never threw me away. This incident, however, I doubt that she knows of. She would have no idea of a dead soul even existing if it didn’t make its way into her dominion.”

“So why do souls do that, then? Go into dominions?”

“Where else have they to go? Off of this Norns forsaken planet, they would fade into nothingness entirely. On this planet, they still don’t truly exist until they are in the plains of Hell, the gateway into Hel. And once here, might as well go the full way. Especially if you have family and friends inside already waiting for you.”

Baldr thought about that. “I think that I would like to wait for my loved one first.”

Loki laughed. “You? Baldr, you’re an Asgardian through and through… you will be going to Valhalla, along with your beloved Nanna.”

Baldr blushed. “You know about that?”

“Everybody does, it is the talk of the town. Do not fret, Baldr, she is beautiful, and really, that’s all that Odin would have wanted.”

“I do not care for his opinions,” Baldr said, firmly. “He was a good and just king, and nothing more to me.”

Loki nodded, hecould respect that opinion.

.

“Hela, love, what is this?” Thor asked, watching as Hela marched from their father’s vault, eternal flame in hands.

“Fuck those giant Ice Monsters. We’re burning Jotunheimr to the ground.”


	27. Chapter 27

Fulla found a cave to raise Hela in. Ha! Her Lady’s eldest daughter’s child, raised in a cave… oh how times had changed. Even Baldr, not in any position to declare himself heir, had been raised under better conditions. She cursed Heimdall’s name, that old fool would never learn, would never listen.

Heimdall was older than her. There, she said it. He was older than a _lot_ of people, the man aged slowly even for an Asgardian! He had been looking 54000 for the past 71230230 years, dammit! She attributed it to the fact that the man had nine mothers, **_nine_**.

Sif and Sigurd were his younger siblings, but the pair were both far, **_far_** younger than he was (as most things in Asgard were). She wondered what had ever happened to that blustering fool’s younger brother. Perhaps he had realised Heimdall’s idiocy and run far, _far_ away. Fulla wouldn’t blame him.

.

Now, it is time to clear any speculation that you, the reader, might have about Sigurd the Everglorious. After all, if he is such an important figure, then surely it is important that you know about him and his motivations. The only problem is that only Sigurd knows why Sigurd left, and everybody else can only guess on it. As we have not yet found Sigurd, it is impossible to retrieve his account, and therefore we must rely on those who knew him best.

Let’s start with Big Brother **Heimdall.**

Growing up, the pair had a mentor-student type relationship. Heimdall taught Sigurd everything, like any good older brother out there. But where Heimdall was more reserved, especially on account of his special heritage, Sigurd was a firework waiting to explode. He was flashy and showy and always out to impress the ladies. Heimdall couldn’t fault him for it though, he knew what it was like to be a teenager. Unfortunately, when you were blessed with the Sight and eight other important gifts from each of his mothers, like Heimdall was, you wound up finding sex itself not so appealing because, well, because you’d seen it all. Though Heimdall would never admit it, his inability to turn his Sight off meant that he had, at some point or the other, seen every single woman and man in Asgard naked at some point… yeah, not the best framework for a relationship.

Anyways, back to Sigurd. Sigurd was a champion at nearly every for of combat out there, and had a heart of gold. So when Hela was terrorising the Nine, Odin sent Hela to try and contain her. Something happened to him after that, he changed. Not only was it his first failure ever, but he was less… Sigurd after it. Heimdall hadn't been able to see a thing, he never was when it came to his brother (Gram kept Sigurd from Heimdall’s sight, it had always been the case) but Hela must have done something to him. He was certain that whatever had happened had been the same as what Hela had done to Thor. Why else would he have disappeared?

**Little sister Sif** :

There wasn’t that much of a difference in age between the pair, not nearly as bad as their age gap with Heimdall. Then again, Heimdall basically predated everything.

Sif had been fairly young at the time, barely three hundred. Her big brother (800) had gone out to fight some evil bitch (Hela, as Heimdall would later confirm) and had come back… different. He was short-tempered, no longer loveable, no longer the apple of their father’s eye (because they didn’t have mothers- not proper ones. But that was okay, who needed a mom when you had a dad, right? And vice-versa, it really depended on which one was responsible enough to stay).

But it still hurt when their mother died. Sigurd came… but after that he left and he never came back. Personally, Sif thought that her brother had just gone through a phase, though she knew that Heimdall disagreed with her. So Sif’s opinion was that he had gone through a phase, run away, and decided he liked living a life roaming the Realms rather than merely defending Asgard. After all, once a hero, always a hero, right?

**King Odin**

We are not able to access this opinion, because the author is not going to Valhalla, just trust me on that one.

**King Thor**

Was a baby… and right now, with his current mental state, I highly doubt that he cares.

**Queen Hela**

Is not a fan of the author’s.

**Loki:**

Loki believes that Odin exiled Sigurd for committing a crime. It had to have been a heinous one, perhaps one against the state? Maybe he’d just led a quest that went horribly horribly wrong and had shown no remorse for it? From people’s descriptions of Sigurd, he sounded like he was used to a life full of praise, if he were to be criticised for endangering peoples lives he might not have taken it too well, he knew all too well that it was difficult to adjust from people praising you 24/7 to suddenly calling you out on your actions.

**Baldr:**

Baldr believes that Sigurd left Asgard willingly, as a retiree. After all, the man had spent most of his young days fighting, maybe he just wanted to enjoy what he had left of them? Baldr couldn’t fault him for that, and besides, Asgard hadn’t had many major wars after that, definitely no big monsters invading. Maybe that was what Sigurd was doing now, keeping monsters away from Asgard for sport.

**Mödí:**

… You’re kidding, right?

So, what have we learned here? Aside from Loki, the general consensus is that for whatever reason, Sigurd left freely of his own volition with the option to return to Asgard whensoever he pleased. It had also been established that he had fought Hela and became a changed man shortly afterwards. What all of this means, who knows? We will have to find Sigurd for that, for it is in his mind and it is only ever rude to **_assume_** what is going on in peoples’ minds (not, being rude isn’t _always_ a bad thing).

.

“So what is the deal with Niffleheim anyways, how can a planet be this cold and dreary and deserted and still be considered a planet?”

“It is rumoured that Frost Giants once walked these fields… but ones of the days of old, nothing like the modern ones.”

“Oh?”

“They-they wielded fire and earth and all of nature’s imaginable elements.”

“Then why call them ‘Frost Giants’?”

“I… do not know. Perhaps it is where the term Jotnar comes from.”

“Perhaps. What happened to them?”

Loki shrugged. “It is anybody’s guess. But I’d put my money on Bor, the man was ruthless, and given how little we know about them it is unlikely that it happened during father’s time.”

“ _Your_ father’s time, but yes, Odin’s scribes generally kept good records.”

“I can’t help but wonder if this is not a good time to invade Helheimr,” Loki pondered aloud.

Baldr’s eyes widened comically. “You can not be serious.”

“But why not? Perhaps he is in there? Maybe he died?”

“If Sigurd died, then he died as a hero and nothing else. He would have gone to Valhalla. And besides, if he is so important, I’m certain that the Norns wouldn’t have let him die. Given that there is _no way_ that that didn’t occur to you, I would like to know your _real_ reason to want to go there.”

“I have none,” Loki said simply, and he was the God of Lies so Baldr reasoned that no matter how much he tried, he wouldn’t get an honest answer from him and left it at that.

.

Mödí is now 10 months old. He crawled today. The Norns were dumbstruck by how cute he was (as long as you didn’t look into those ferocious little eyes of him too closely).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, because it's quarantine (and also, just like in general) I've gotta ask: have any of you watched Ragnarok (the tv show, not Thor Ragnarok)? Because it iS SO GOOD! OMG! Likkkkkkkeeeee, for real! I swear that Laurits is Loki, I just have no proof at all yet, but it is SO GOOD! Seriously, watch it!❤️ It's on Netflix.


	28. Chapter 28

Hela put the Eternal Flame on the ground. The problem with it, of course, was that anyone whom it touched would turn to ash, and she definitely couldn’t put somebody back into ash. But who cared anymore. Damn these people, she said, damn these people to Hel.

“Get our men out of there,” she instructed Thor. But her husband made no move to comply. She glared at him. “What!? What is it now!?”

“I have reason to believe that Loki is in that ice mountain.” Thor said, his voice betraying no emotion, not that he felt them normally anymore anyways.

“And? From the beginning you have wanted that ice runt to suffer.”

“He has our child with him.” Thor said. “He has our heir.”

Hela was going to explode. “That is _not_ your heir, damn you! Your heir is _Hel_ , which that frost fuck’s goons have kidnapped and done who-knows-what to! How _dare_ you prioritise whatever monster you have spawned w-!” Hela was cut off by a harsh slap across her face.

“You will _not_ speak of my son that way!” Thor roared, and his eyes lit up with thunder the likes of which Hela had never seen. For the first time in a long time, she was _very much_ scared. Thor had never raised a hand against her, not that the spell would have let him. What had gotten into him? What was it about this child that he and Loki shared that made him so passionate, what had made him so possessive of Loki when Loki was pregnant? He had acted almost as though a lover might, but she was certain that he hated Loki because prior to it he wanted Loki disposed of and had been _very_ vocal about that. Whatever was going on, she didn’t like it.

Instead of apologising and bending down and helping her up, Thor turned away from her, picked up the Eternal Flame, and flew away to Norns knew where. Good. Fine. She didn’t need him. Her eyes teared up. She _didn’t_ need him, not at all. She was fine. She was an independent woman, used to taking care of herself, she would be fine. And when she found Hel, _they_ would be fine.

.

It took a full month to convince Baldr to go to Hel with him, and he’d had to be _extremely_ crafty about it.

“I’ll just go in then,” he’d finally said, after building Baldr into thinking that Loki was reluctant to do so for half of the month.

“I’ll come too. Norns, Loki, you are so stubborn!” He fumed.

Finding the way to Hel was another challenge. They had to wait for a soul on its way. It would be easy, Loki thought, what with the war going on…

Apparently Odin was letting Frost Giants into Valhalla because it took two fucking weeks before somebody _finally_ came along, an old lady from Midgard who had fallen prey to something called ‘Covid-19’. Apparently, as he learned from her ceaseless chatter-spree, her grandson had been out partying with some friends at some beach, he’d contracted it, and had unknowingly given it to him. She had diabetes, and was dead within five days. Mortals, always so selfish.

Then there was they way down, which took a while to plan once they realised that the rocks were mostly loose. They needed a failsafe incase they got down and discovered that Loki’s seidr no longer worked down there. It was only figured out in the first place, when Baldr noticed a guilty look on Loki’s face, which was weird, because he was pretty sure that Loki wasn’t supposed to feel guilt.

“I… I _do_ have a way out, but I am afraid that using it will attract unwanted company.”

“What? What way?”

“I… I have the Tesseract.”

Baldr’s eyes bugged out. “What? You mean that we could have used it this whole entire time!?”

“Ssh! Keep your voice down! _Yes_ , we could have used it once we figured out where Hel was, you still need to _know_ where you’re going…. But Thanos and his Children would undoubtedly be able to detect its use, and then we would be royally fucked for a whole other reason.”

“But it’s an emergency.”

“Yes, but he believes that it was destroyed.”

“What if we use it to get back out, and then you just teleport us somewhere else?”

“He’ll know it’s in the Nine, and that will do us no good either.”

“Well maybe if we _do_ attract him down here, he could fight off Hela for us. Doesn’t he have all of those weird ideals about balance, and that stupid God-complex that would clash so brilliantly with Hela’s?”

Loki had never thought of that. “Alright, I see your point. We shall use it to come out then. Now, let us descend into Hel quite literally, brother.”

“I’ll go first.”


	29. Chapter 29

Hel was a decrepit mess of rocks and canyons and death. It looked as though nobody had been around in a century.

“How big is this place?” Baldr asked, wanting to know how long they’d have to spend there.

“Dunno,” Loki breathed, mystified. So this was Hel. Cold mountains, dull and drab, just like Hela.

“So, how are we going to- Loki, _Loki_!” Loki wandered off. There was something about this place that just drew him in. “Loki, where are you going!? Loki come back here!” When he realised that his prince wasn’t going to comply, he huffed out an indignant sigh and scurried after him. “Loki! Loki, this is a _mistake_!”

“Look!” Loki pointed, cutting off Baldr mid-plea. Baldr followed his prince’s hand and gaped. Around them, the area was painted in greys, unsurprisingly, but what Loki saw was a tree. It was a big tree, a ginormous one. It sat on a rocky outcrop, its roots hanging over the side so elegantly, and at its heart it glowed a pulsing lime green that brightened everything up before suddenly switching to dim and repeating the cycle. Baldr couldn’t believe his eyes, nor the rest of his senses in all truth.

“What is it?” His mouth hung open.

“I believe… I believe that it is the world tree.”

“What?” Baldr’s neck snapped to face his head towards Loki and away from the alluring tree. “That is impossible! Yggdrasil is on Vanaheim!”

“Yes… but that is merely one branch of it. Yggdrasil is a network, and I believe that we have just found the source of it all.”

Baldr couldn’t believe this man, what was he saying? Did Loki not realise how plain this tree looked in comparison to the one on Vanaheim? And what of the Norns themselves? They had indicated that theirs was Yggdrasil.

“Oh come off it, Baldr!” Loki snapped. Whoops, he had said those bits aloud, hadn’t he? “They themselves said that Yggdrasil had been displaced! And they were discontent with where it was, or they would not have begged us so to bring back their queen. Can’t you see? That was a _branch_ of Yggdrasil! And as for its ‘plain looks’, seidr is the manipulation of fate and heavily tied to the earth, i _t is nOT_ ** _SUPPOSED_** _TO LOOK FLASHY_!” Loki let out a huff and a puff. “Now, if this tree is Yggdrasil, and I strongly suspect that it is, it can surely tell us how to find Sigurd and his company.”

“But how will we get there? We do not know where this pit leads.”

Loki spread his arms and twitched. Baldr frowned, what was he doing? He twitched again. And again. And again. Finally he groaned and sighed. “My seidr does not work here, we will have to make use of the tesseract.”

“Are you not worried about Thanos?”

“We’ll make it quick, we’ll be out of here in a giffy,” Loki summoned the stone from his little space pocket. “Hold onto it.” Before Baldr could blink, they were there. _On_ the tree, on the verge of slipping. Baldr let out a little yelp and clung to the branch of the tree he was on with all of his strength. He _hated_ heights.

Loki climbed up the tree. The stone… the stone was doing something weird, Baldr could see from the corner of his eyes that there was light being shone from it… but it wasn’t red light, he realised as he craned his neck to look at it. No, it was the same lime that the tree exuded.

As though in a trance, Loki moved to the centre of the tree. He reached where its heart would be, then taking the stone put his hand in.

“ _Show me Sigurd the Everglorious_ ,” his voice was gentle.

And then he saw it. He saw a vision of a darkened realm, bright lights shining around it. People were celebrating. Sigurd was in chains, as were Lorelei and the Norn Queen. The people… he knew them, the people as a whole, not personally. _Dwarves_ … this must be Nidavellir.

Snapping out of his reverie, he said to Baldr, “We must make haste. The dwarves on Nidavellir have them.”

Loki swung down the branches of the tree, grabbed Baldr, zapped them onto the surface of Niffleheim, put the tesseract away, and teleported them all the way across the Nine to Nidavellir. All this in the time it took Baldr to open his eyes and realise that he was no longer hugging a tree branch for support.

“What are we doing here?” Baldr asked a clearly worn out Loki.

“We-we,” Loki panted, “They’re here… they’ve… they’ve been captured.”

“Loki, are you alright?” Baldr asked, concerned, kneeling down next to the man he’d spent his entire life thinking was his half-brother.

“Yes, yes… I’m fine, I’m just tired.” Loki murmured, but he didn’t look fine.

“Maybe you ought to rest?”

“There is no time for that!” Loki snapped. “Come now, let me up, I am all better now. Come on, they’re in the square. They’ve got them tied up.”

Baldr followed the steaming man mournfully. If something were to happen to him, then they were all doomed.

.

Thor was very much surprised to find his incredibly beautiful wife waiting for him in their tent, laying on the covers with white neglige on.

“I’ve been waiting,” she smiled, coyly.

“What is this?” He smiled back, not that he was complaining.

“Well, I thought with all of the war and fighting going on, we deserved something special, something for just the two of us,” she smiled back at him. If Thor were genuinely in love with her, and not under some stupid spell, he would have _definitely_ noticed the cracks in her smile. But his brain was fine-tuned to be obsessed with whomever cast the spell on him, and that was Hela.

Saying no more, Thor shed himself of his clothes in languid, smooth motions and got onto the bed with her, kissing her down onto the pillows, and bringing his hands up to rove over her chest, pushing the satin down as he himself lowered his mouth to suck on each tit. Hela had stopped lactating when her body had realised that there was no point in it about a month after Hel’s birth, nevertheless her breasts were lovelier and plumper now than they had ever been, and Thor was enjoying it.

Good, Hela thought, her hand on Thor’s head as he sucked on each nipple as though he could still draw milk from it. Let him have this and be done with whatever fond inclinations he has towards Loki and that wretched child of his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There WAS a bit I wanted to include here, where Loki was coughing up blood, but I decided against it because it didn't really seem to fit, and if he was doing so then OBVIOUSLY Baldr wouldn't let Loki go and do what Loki is about to do. Also, as we near our reunion with the Norns, we near the discovery of a VERY long awaited question to be answered that I will let you speculate about. Until then, my fellow quarantiners.❤️


	30. Chapter 30

They found the trio in the centre of the village that they were in. They were tied up to a pole and surrounded by what appeared to be a village full of _very angry_ dwarves.

“Halt! What is going on here!?” Loki demanded, putting on a show of strength even though he felt as though he were dying inside.

“Who are you?” One of the dwarves sneered.

“I am Prince Loki Odinson of Asgard! What is the meaning of this?”

“Prince of Asgard, eh? Then _you_ can tell us what to do with these three here.”

“What have they done to slight you so?”

“They have lied to us and cheated us out of a good day’s work. They pitted two families against one another, and now the brothers Brokkr and Sindri are in need of compensation.”

“What compensation is this?”

“The hero of Asgard’s head,” the man hissed.

_Oh_ , he looked at the three tied to the pole for a moment. They were staring at him wide-eyed. No doubt Sigurd had heard of him, Karnilla was the Queen of the Norns, so of course she knew of him… Lorelei he grew up with, but he didn’t want to go there.

“Well, that presents us with a bit of a problem… see, it is impossible for you to take his head, you would need to take his neck. I doubt that this was promised to you.”

“ _No_ , a hundred thousand credits were promised to us! It is fine, we will just kill the three of them.” The angry man made to move towards them, sword drawn.

“Not so fast,” Loki intercepted him. “You demanded compensation in the form of his head, you cannot fo back on your word now.”

“Why not? They did it?”

“Would that mean that as an Asgardian I have right to seek retribution from you for not abiding by your word?” Loki asked. “I think not. Now, why do we not simply discuss this? I am sure that we can reach an amicable agreement.”

The man looked distrustful of him, no doubt he had heard of Loki’s reputation. But Asgard was Nidavellir’s ally, this would look bad on them (And Loki doubted that they knew that Loki was a Prince of Asgard no longer).

“Very well then, Your Highness,” the man said through gritted teeth.

.

The negotiations lasted all night and still no agreement. Loki didn’t have any credits on him because he was considered property and thus not allowed to own any, but instead blamed it on Asgard’s current war effort against Jotunheimr, something which he was quick to remind that the dwarves were not helping with. That night, as they all slept, Loki used his seidr to pass through the chief’s hut, undetected, and made his way towards the three people he’d spent the last 4 months scouring for.

He whipped out one of his knives and cut through the ropes binding them with practiced ease. Ah, dwarves, so brilliant and clever in their designs, but so keen to use simple ones nonetheless.

“Run. Baldr is waiting for us on the outskirts of the village. Come on, let us go.”

It was unfortunately three minutes prior to those instructions that the Chief had, knowing better than to trust Loki, gone to check on him and discovered his bed missing. He had, in the time that it had taken to finish untying the trio, gone on to alert everybody to bring back the ‘villains’, as he had put it.

The moment that they saw the dwarves approaching, they all made a break for it. Just one problem, Loki was in a grievous bodily state. The dwarves advanced, throwing ropes and effectively pinning Loki to the ground, and as Sigurd turned back, Loki just yelled out, “ ** _GO_**!”

Sigurd looked conflicted, but complied with Loki’s orders anyways.

“Well, well,” the Chief said, his eyes burning maliciously. “I suppose that _all_ Aesir are cursed with some affliction that refuses to let them keep their words. You don’t want us to punish your people? Fine. But we are going to punish you.”

“Sir, I can explain-”

“Oh, you have done _more than enough_ explaining,” he growled. “We cannot kill you, that would be too heavy of a price, to ask Asgard to offer aprince’s life, it would be an act of war… but we can stop just short of, something dignified and justifiable for a silver-tongued _liar_ like yourself. I think that the only way we can teach you a lesson and spare the world your lies would be to _sew your mouth shut_! Urgard! Bring the needle!”

“ _No_!” Loki squirmed, struggling to get up and out of the damned ropes he was in.

“Hold him down!” The Chief commanded. Dwarves from all around Loki started putting their filthy paws all over him, pushing him to the ground and forcing him to hold still. “Trust me,” the man laughed, mercilessly, “it will be less painful if you don’t squirm.”

.

Once they were done, they let Loki go. What else could they do with him? And besides, with his sewn-up lips, he sent the perfect message to anyone who saw him: do not cross a Dwarf.

“Loki, what happened?” Baldr breathed, running forwards to envelop Loki in a stabilising hug. The sides of the stitches that bound his lips were caked in dried blood. Not only had the process been barbaric, but it had also been unhygienic. Loki wouldn’t be surprised if he caught an illness from this. Baldr made to try and remove the stitches, but Loki pushed him away and shook his head, no. This was the wrong place to do it, if something went wrong they would have no means of keeping him alive.

Sigurd, Karnilla, and a seething Lorelei were there. That was okay, Loki didn’t particularly want Lorelei there either. Their gags and chains had been removed from them. Great, now they could defend themselves, he wanted to roll his eyes. Loki put his hand out in a fist. Baldr took it, aware of protocol. Sigurd eyes Baldr’s hand wearily before doing the same. Karnilla just shook her head.

“I am the ex Queen of the Norns, transporting us to Vanaheim will kill you, let me use my seidr,” she snapped her fingers and they were on Vanaheim, standing by the World Tree’s Vanaheim branch.

The cave opened. “Who goes there?” Urd asked, before her eyes landed on the party. “My Queen,” she fell into a bow, as did Verdandi and Skuld.

“There is no time for this, and I am not your queen, no longer. Quick, the Laufeyson, he requires medical attention,” Karnilla barked, very much like a queen.

Urd took one look at Loki and her eyes almost popped out of her head. “Loki-Prince, come,” she grabbed him and forced him into the cave. He was laid down there on a slab of stone. His head throbbed, he wasn’t certain how long he would be able to retain consciousness. Skuld knelt by him and began to pull at his stitches with… with something.

And that was when he passed out.

.

When Loki woke up, he felt incredibly numb around the mouth area.

“He is awake,” he heard Baldr say. Of course, figured he would keep bedroom watch over him.

“Where am I? Where are we?”

“In the Norns cave. Rest now, there is no immediate urgency any longer. We have found Sigurd the Everglorious and Karnilla the Norn Queen, we are in the clear.”

“What about me?” An indignant and bratty voice which had mercifully not had to listen to for the past 400 years said.

“Uh, sure, why not. The more the merrier,” Baldr said, dismissively. He turned his attentions back to Loki. “And look who else is here!” It was then that Loki opened his eyes and noticed Mödí sitting in Baldr’s lap. Mödí was a big boy now, he could sit upright. It made Loki’s heart melt and his eyes water.

Sigurd walked into the room then. “We need to talk.”

“Aye, that we do.”


	31. Chapter 31

Talking, as it turned out, tired Loki greatly. His entire mouth-area was sore, despite all the seidr applied to heal it. He was told that the scar tissue would likely remain on there for a while.

“The Norns have explained much, but there are things even they do not know. Things that even they have not seen. How fare my siblings?” Sigurd asked him.

“They are alright, or at least they were the last time I saw them, it’s been nearly a half year.”

“I see. What is it that you require me for, then?” Sigurd asked. “You saved my life out on Nidavellir, even I can admit that I owe you one.”

“We need all the help that we can get. Hela has returned.”

Sigurd’s face darkened. “Ah, yes, the scourge of _Odin’s_ family, you need help cleaning up your messes again.”

“Why did you leave?” Loki asked, abruptly. “Everybody speculates why you left, but I want to hear it from you.”

“Me? You want to know why I left? I was sent to fight Hela, and I watched all of my brethren fall beside me as she slaughtered them, all because Odin couldn’t take care of his own messes, all because he couldn’t fight his own damned battles. Do you know how many of us went in there that day? 100. 100 of Asgard’s finest warriors. Do you know what came back? Me.”

“Brunnhilde too,” Loki said.

That piqued Sigurd’s interest. “Brunnhilde survived? I watched all the Valkyries get torn apart limb from limb by Fenris once Hela was done with them.”

“Fenris Wolf is dead. _Please_ , Sigurd, we really need your help. Odin is deadnow, it’s just me and Thor, but she’s cast a spell on Thor, he’s gone dark. I can not win in a fight against my brother, not alone anyways. I need your help.”

“And what is in it for me?”

“You may have forgotten your land, Sigurd, but your siblings sure haven’t. And it would be a real shame if they died alongside the rest of Asgard and you could have prevented it.”

Sigurd contemplated Loki’s words. “I will need time to think on this. I’ve been told you need my sword, Gram?”

“Yes.”

“Take it, it’s yours,” Sigurd said, tossing it as though it were a hot potato in Loki’s direction.

.

If there was _one thing_ that Loki was grateful for, it was that somehow, despite all odds, he had made it back in time to be present at Mödí’s first birthday.

There were streamers and balloons and there was even a cake! It was anybody’s guess how they’d gotten everything during the midst of a war, but Loki was nonetheless grateful for it.

Baldr watched from the side, a bittersweet smile playing on his lips as he took in Loki holding his son in a hug with such joy. Loki, who was smiling despite that his lips were scarred and he was in grievous bodily health according to the Norns who had yet to talk to him (let him heal fully, they had said),and Mödí smiling with equal force, his face yet unmarred, just grateful to be in his mother’s arms. They made quite the picture, even if it was a sad one. Baldr hated his apparent full-sister for all the pain that she had put his family through, because fuck it, she didn’t count as family. Not in his books. Some might call him cruel for discounting her, but upon her return she certainly hadn’t treated Odin’s family as family, so why should he offer her any different of a courtesy?

Sigurd and Lorelei stood awkwardly to the side. Was there something going on between them? A romance, perhaps? Baldr supposed that it wasn’t the worst age gap out there, despite that Sigurd was triple her age. But Lorelei wasn’t technically an adult yet, she still had 100 years to go (yeah… sounded about right, she was 200-300 less than him and Loki).

Karnilla was chatting with her subjects. She was such a hot-head and she was also really full of herself. Baldr couldn’t see why _anyone_ would want to follow her. And honestly: who abdicates for a few millennia and doesn’t even appoint a new ruler? It was absurd! He didn’t like her, he didn’t like her one bit.

Mödí was a fussy baby that night. Loki cursed the cake that they had given him for keeping his son up. Baldr, being Mödí’s uncle and not his parent, thought it was hilarious and snuck him more candy from the party any time that Loki wasn’t looking. Grr, Thor and Loki’s kid was so _precious_!

“You shouldn’t do that,” a stern woman’s voice said. “Loki is already in pain, you are only creating more work, and therefore suffering, for him.”

“Alright, _Karnilla_ ,” he dropped the candy. “There, are you happy?” Because he sure wasn’t. He felt guilty now, in fact.

“Hmmm,” there was a brief expression change before it turned to her normal condescending one. She turned and walked out of the door (this cave was like a bunker. It was _insane_ what one could do with seidr).

.

The battle was long-fought still. Thor was slightly more agreeable now, which Hela was grateful for. They still had no news of their daughter though, and Hela grew more and more worried by the day.

“I can not feel Loki’s soul anywhere in there, _please_ husband!”

“No, it is an experienced seidrmadr. It is probably hiding from you.”

Hela glared into the back of Thor’s head. Fuck him. Seriously, screw this, she was going off to find Hel.

“Where are you going?” He called.

“To find our daughter, since I am _clearly_ the only one who cares for her.”

.

“We need to talk about your usage of dark seidr,” Skuld said, sternly.

“What about it?” Loki frowned.

“Boy, what you learnt, you learnt virtually overnight. Your body has not had time to make the changes and adjustments that you need to use it properly. We did a scan of your body, you have ulcers in your stomach and your bones will turn to dust if you fall hard enough on them.”

“What? How is this possible?”

“When we teach a student dark seidr, we always put them through trials, to strengthen their body for the feats required of it when one employs dark seidr. The trials include both physical and mental ones, you’ve been through neither. Whoever taught you dark seidr has essentially set you up to die.”

“His name was Angrboda.”

“Angrboda? The Forest Witch? We recently cut his thread, I take it that he is dead then.”

“Aye, to my knowledge.” At Skuld’s expression, he elaborated. “Hela.”

“Right, right… nevertheless, I do not recommend that you use dark seidr so freely. Your body is not ready for it.”

“Unless you want it to be,” Verdandi piped up.

“What?”

“We can put you through the trials necessary.”

“But it will take far too long,” Skuld protested. “One trial alone can take up to a century.”

Verdandi looked at Loki, a gleam in her eyes. “Something about him tells me he’ll be a fast learner. And besides, he’s already learnt the spells, his body would have already started _some_ adjustments.”

Skuld looked at Loki, her face somehow simultaneously horrified and blank of expression. “Boy… these spells can do unforetold things to your body.”

“Like?”

“None of us,” she gestured at her, Verdandi and Ullr, “Are able to have children.”

“What?”

“The trials, they took from us the ability to create life, now all we can do is manage it,” she gestured to their threads. “And it is not an uncommon side effect either. On top of that, some lose their vision, some lose their will to live…”

Loki thought back to what Sigurd had said. He was absolutely right, their family needed to take responsibility for their actions. And if Odin wasn’t around to control his daughter… well, then, he supposed he owed his late father for sparing his own life as a child.

“I shall complete the trials.” He said, his voice firm and unwavering, and his will doing the same.


	32. Chapter 32

Loki was due to start the first trial in the next day. Sigurd wasn’t having it, his hands itching for action. “At least tell me where my siblings are.”

“Alas, I cannot. It is invite only,” it wasn’t like Loki knew where the cave was.

“Bah! You think you are superior for staying in Asgard and being Odin’s tool,” Sigurd cursed. Loki rolled his eyes: this guy had more screws loose than anything Thor had ever built.

Mödí gurgled at Loki, making grabby hands. Loki bent his head down and kissed his little boy’s head. Within a year he’d be able to walk. Loki hoped that whatever this first task was he was back in time to witness them. He had a sinking feeling that Mödí was going to be growing up without him. It broke his heart.

Baldr picked Mödí up and swung him around. Loki smiled. At least Mödí had a cool uncle, he supposed.

“Do not worry. The first ones won’t be so long… well, the first one itself might be. The point is, you can’t teach someone to swim by throwing him into the middle of the ocean.” Skuld soothed. “Your son will not miss you much.”

“Where will these trials be taking place?”

“In here,” Skuld touched his forehead and the world went black.

.

Loki woke up in a field. It was dark, nighttime, but he could see. He thought of a seidr spell to light up the world by changing the position of whichever planet he was on. But no, the Norns had told him not to use dark seidr, that one more spell could kill him in his current state.

There was nobody in sight. It was just him, all alone. In the far distance, he saw Yggdrasil. Figuring that he must probably climb it, he made his way towards it. Well, he _tried_ to make his way towards it, but it seemed as though his feet were stuck in the mud. He tried using his normal seidr to get the ground to release him, but it wouldn’t budge. Oh my.

.

When Loki finally woke up from whatever trance that Skuld had put him in, he woke up to a lady with pink hair standing over him. _Skuld!?_ When had she changed hair colour.

Someone else was standing over him too.

At first it was hard to believe. But when he looked into his son’s eyes he knew that it was him, curly blonde hair and six-teethed. He felt like a stranger from another time trapped in his body and immediately wanted to scream. The feeling of his infant- was that even the right word anymore?- son’s arms wrapping in a hug around his arms did little to quite the strange things that he was feeling. How long had he been out?

“1 year. 1 year you spent traipsing those fields. 1 year it took you to muster the strength to get out of the quicksand.”

“And my body? Has it grown in strength?”

Skuld looked hesitant. “ ** _Slightly_** , but not enough for you to start using dark seidr, I am afraid.”

Loki looked at Mödí mournfully. His son had cleared his first milestone without him. It wrenched at him deep within. But if there was one thing that Mödí needed to learn as the heir to his father’s throne, it was that with high rank came great responsibility, and thus great anguish. You could not let your people suffer when there was even the _tiniest_ of things that you could do for them.

“What of the others? Have they vanished off too?”

“Sigurd is out of shape. He has been training. The war to come isn’t some simple thing that a man can show up after nearly 2000 years of no real work and turn the tide of it all… _help_ turn the tide of it all… that girl of his, very stubborn…”

“Lorelei?”

“Yes. She is being trained in seidr. She doesn’t have a strong talent for it, but at this point we can’t be choosers,” for we are beggars, he assumed that she wanted to say but didn’t.

“And Baldr?”

“Right here!” His apparent brother called. Apparent brother or apparent identity? He was going to develop a whole host of issues from that development, that he was certain of.

“Again. I must go again. Lead me to the next task.”

“Do you not wish to rest first? That trial was quite hard on your body.”

“No. Every moment that we waste is another moment that Asgard suffers.”

“Mu…mu…” Mödí mumbled, looking at Loki pleadingly. The room broke into silence.

“Did he just say ‘mama?’” Baldr breathed.

“Mama,” Mödí grabbed Loki’s tunic, sitting on top of him (Loki was still lying on the floor). “ _Mamam_!”

“He did,” Loki gently reached out a hand and took Mödí’s hand. “My son, I love you more than anything in the Nine and beyond, and I want you to always know that,” he said softly, muting it so that nobody else could hear. “This is the price that we pay for our people, always remember that.”

Mödí’s young eyes shone with understanding. Loki turned back to Skuld. “I’m ready to go. Let us start the next one.”

“Very well, young prince.”

.

Hela had been combing through Jotunheimr for an **_entire year_**! She glanced at the thicket of trees she kept avoiding. There was something in there, something ominous, something that put even her off. Very well then, she would do what she had to for her daughter, she thought bitterly. Just as Thor would do anything that he could for his son.

.

Asgard was a mess. The kingdom was in tatters, and for what? Nothing! Sindr’s forces didn’t even stay once she had decimated the place.

The plan had been a disaster… there was one thing though, she thought, one thing that had made the entire quest worth it. And that had been melting Odin’s throne, defacing the mighty Hlidskialf until it was little more than a weeping widow’s puddle. She had derived great satisfaction in it. Much of the gold had come from her own kingdom of Musspelheim.

.

“We must hold a meeting!” A woman cried. “We must band together and stay strong!”

“Bah! Who will lead us through this!? What are we to do without our monarchs?”

“Bah! Fuck them! We should have converted into a democracy a _long_ time ago!”

Asgard was in chaos. There was fire and flames everywhere. A figure stepped through the shadows, she wore a blue cape and shining silver armour. “I will lead you through this.”

“Bah!” A haggard old woman called. “And what right do you have?”

Brunnhilde smirked. “I’m a Valkyrie.”

.

Hela travelled farther and farther up the snowy mountain hidden by that horrid Ironwood when she stumbled upon a body, well preserved on account of all of the snow up here. Interesting, it lacked a heart. No problem, she could find an animal and steal its heart. Whoever this was, with the creepy ominous vibe that they were giving her, could be in invaluable ally in the quest to find her daughter.

And then she stumbled upon Fenris’s corpse and she _knew_ that this was the right person to do her bidding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now is probably a good time to tell you guys that although Hela believed that Thor had been told of Mödí, he hadn't, and up until this point he STILL isn't 100% sure if Loki even had Mödí, he's just holding out hope. For those of you who know why he is obsessed with this kid, I think that this is a good time to tell you that if he were to meet Mödí, the condition for his want for Mödí would be over. He doesn't feel any genuine paternal feelings for Mödí, not in this state (he will once he comes to, though)


	33. Chapter 33

Angrboda clutched his chest. He felt different- his _heart_ felt different. This was all very confusing to him, he could have sworn that he’d been killed or something. His fight against Loki played back vividly in his mind. Loki, what had happened to him?

“Angrboda Thiazison,” a woman purred, she had black hair and…

“Loki?” He questioned, Loki looked a little different this time. Her mouth twisted into a scowl.

“I am _Hela_ , you imbecile!” She glared daggers into him. “Loki has left you for dead, clearly. What better way to extract your vengeance upon him than by joining me?”

“You are the enemy of my people?”

“Which ones? You are Half-Vanir, are you not? The Forest Witch.”

“I know that my grandfather’s kingdom is not fighting _alongside_ yours.” He hissed.

Hela was growing impatient. “Look, seidrmadr, I am here to offer you a choice. The Jotnar are losing. You can either join them in your fate or retain your position as a free man, capeesh? I know men like you well enough to know that you treasure yourself above all else.”

That was… that was true. He nodded. “Very well, what would you have me do?”

“I need you to find Loki Laufeyson and execute him.” She smiled maniacally. “And in doing so, return my daughter Hel to me.”

“Aye, my Queen.”

.

Loki woke, having had completed a total of 457 trials. His body was strong and he _personally_ felt great! Sure, he’d spent 120 years doing these trials, and sure, Mödí had entered his teenage years without his mother to guide him, but he figured that it was good that Mödí learn from his example, that the people were first to everything.

Sigurd and Valkyrie had travelled back to Asgard to help restore peace to it. Hela, the madwoman, had apparently disappeared from all sight. Heimdall had communed with him that the last place he had seen her had been just outside of the Ironwood. It sent shivers down his spine to think that she could have resurrected Angrboda or something crazy like that. Worse still, she could send Fenris after him once more. At least Angrboda couldn’t track him here, not if he hid himself, Fenris still had her bloody sense of smell.

“Are there any more for me to tackle?”

Verdandi bit her lip. “No.” She lied. The last trial for him was something that they couldn’t perform, and was also something that they could not warn him about, unfortunately.

He nodded. He had been told that seidr had worked as a bandage around his memories to keep the pain of what Hela had done to him _as well as_ his memories of Angrboda from harming his brain.

“Mother, you’re awake!” Mödí ran up to Loki to give him a hug. Mödí was 5”5 at the moment, hadn’t had his growth spurt yet, but something about him tugged at Loki’s lips, and it wasn’t just that he was his son. They didn’t know what he was the god of yet, but it was something that made Loki feel victorious despite not having had won the war yet. There was a fire in there, something he knew would give Hela her just desserts.

“Yes, my son.”

“Are you going to go back under?”

“No. I am afraid that I have taken a leave of absence for too long. I must return to Asgard.”

“But mother, they will recapture you.”

“Not now, not with all of my newfound seidr abilities.”

“Then I will come with you!”

“Nonsense, Mödí! You are the heir to Asgard, it will not do you well to be out risking your life, not when things are so uncertain right now.”

“But you said father was a great warrior!” Indeed, he had said so 80 years ago after completing trial 99.

“Aye, but he was well-trained long before he ever fought in a war for his father.”

“I am well-trained. Let me fight in this war, _please_! He is my father too!”

“No, Mödí!” Loki snapped at his son. “Please, keep him here,” Loki asked of Verdandi. She nodded.

“Certainly, my prince.”

“Thank you. I shall gather Baldr and leave immediately. I thank you for your help. I am forever indebted to you.”

“Please, my prince, the pleasure is all ours.” After he left, she turned to Mödí. “And as for you, my prince… your fate is in Asgard.”

“But mother said-?”

“Oh please, you were never going to listen to him anyways!”

Mödí beamed. He liked auntie Verdandi, he liked her _very much_!


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: This chapter's dark, I'll do a recap of it at the end if you want to skip.

Fulla groaned as Hel threw another hissy-fit. Teenagers were _such_ a nightmare! She was what a mortal would consider around 13-ish.

Fulla wasn’t entirely sure what Hel was the goddess of yet. Maybe Wi-fi? There wasn’t one for that yet, and she seemed to be _obsessed_ with the thing! She had this thing called Instagram and she was always moaning about some boy-band being split up! Fulla didn’t think that it was appropriate in any way, shape, or form to dub a group of people who only ever really _sang_ a ‘band’, she was of the opinion that the correct term for that was a ‘group’, but every time she brought it up Hel through another one of her infamous hissy-fits! Maybe _that_ was what she was the goddess of: tantrums.

.

Asgard was in a state of repair. It wasn’t _completely_ decimated, and over the past 120 years it seemed to have grown back into **_something_** , not what it once was, it would likely never be that way, but into something at least halfway modest.

Poverty was rampant. Even under Sigurd and Brunnhilde’s undoubtedly excellent leadership, there still remained that all the businesses had burnt down and that the ongoing war against Jotunheimr and consequently most other realms meant that trade prospects were abysmal. Nobody, it seemed, was willing to do business with a kingdom run by Queen Hela, even though it was _technically_ Provisional-Queen Valkyrie at the moment.

“Lackey!” She blinked at the sight of him. “What are you doing here?”

“I am looking for Hela.” Loki said.

“She is in Musspelheim. She branched off of Thor’s campaign and started her own to attack the allies of the Jotnar and force them back to their lands.”

“Clever.”

“She was inspired by what happened here. She comes back every now and again, we hide when she does.”

“Understandably.” Loki nodded. Valkyrie was Hela’s nemesis, and even though Loki thought of her as a provisional queen, the fact of the matter was that she wasn’t one, not unless one of Asgard’s current monarchs declared her as such. Murderous as Hela was, he had no doubt in his mind that the people would turn on Valkyrie and Sigurd in a heartbeat ( ** _despite every-fucking-thing that the pair had done for Asgard!)_** if Hela were to return and declare them enemies of the state. They didn’t even have access to the castle, which was guarded against them. “Any news from Heimdall?”

“No, none yet. I am willing to believe that on one of her visits here, Hela realised the risk of Heimdall seeing into Asgard, and so she placed a covering over it.”

“Aye.”

He popped over to Musspelheim on his own. No need to involve Baldr in his smackdown of this son of a bitch… wait, that was insulting to their mother, Frigga.

And that was when he was greeted with a pair of red eyes that he had hoped never to see again.

.

Hel was a decent seidrkona, which Fulla personally thought was odd given that neither Thor nor Hela were able to use much seidr past the limits of their godly powers. She supposed that the girl had inherited it from her Lady, Frigga, and it made her heart swell. Hel’s favourite charm was creating flocks of bluebirds. Mayhaps she was the goddess of spring? Something beautiful like that.

.

“Angrboda,” Loki breathed.

“Loki,” Angrboda advanced on him, menacingly. “I want a rematch. I’ve grown stronger, see?” Loki fell to his knees at a sharp tug from the inside. “And besides, I was caught unawares last time. Blinded by love for you, no doubt. Worry not, there exists none anymore.”

“Love for- _you tried to steal my son!_ ”

“Aye, that I did, in the hopes of protecting my country. But you were too selfish. No mind that I prevented you from having a mental breakdown, taught you seidr, and let you outstay your welcome in my home chore-free!”

Ahh… Loki had to admit that that was a fair point. “You taught me seidr in a manner that would have killed me had we progressed! And now that you have welled it all up, I am at more risk of having a mental breakdown you dunderhead!”

“Good! It shall make it easier to kill you then!” Before Angrboda could attack him again, Loki set him on fire. Angrboda screamed as Loki bypassed him. He didn’t have time for this. As soon as Angrboda was off fire, Loki froze the man in a block of ice. Ironic, but again, he had things to do and a Hela to kill.

A growl sounded. Fenris? Fenris was back? Loki turned himself hollow as the beast charged at him, before igniting it too. Did these beasts not realise that his power had grown? Now where was Hela?

.

He found Hela leading an undead army against Musspelheim’s capital, Surturheim. Loki closed his eyes and he was standing beside her, he dug his fingers into her arm and he barrel rolled them out of view.

“Loki!?” She hissed.

And then, to his own immense surprise, they weren’t on Musspelheim anymore, they were in… what felt like Asgard, but it was a place he was unfamiliar with.

“Surprise, you’re not the only one who has learned new tricks.” This bastard, this _runt_ had kept her from her beloved daughter for _120_ years! And she knew **_just_** how to get him back for it, she had been planning this for **_years_**.

“Death… death is too easy for you, and it will do little to quite your supporters, not with how meaningless I’ve made it this past century. No, you deserve to suffer,” she said, beating him into the ground. Then, she grabbed him by the collar and flung him into the wall. It wasn’t even a fair fight. Loki sent a prayer to his father, Odin, to protect Mödí wherever Loki himself could not.

Then Hela forced him up, her nails digging into his throat. “Humiliation, I think. Something public so that the people know that I am not to be trifled with,” but Loki wasn’t paying attention to her any longer, no. He was staring inside the glass prison, more so at _who_ was inside it. It couldn’t be… Sigyn? And who was that in there with her?

“What’s wrong, ice runt? You can’t even recognise your own kin?” No, it-it couldn’t be. There was no way that the emaciated dark-floppy-haired boy, that was barely older than Mödí and had his green eyes, in there was his son. “Don’t worry, he will be put out of his misery soon enough.”

“What- no! Stop! What are you doing!? Leave him, he is a _boy_!”

“I take no orders from the would-be king,” Hela’s voice was as cold and barren as whatever remained of her soul at this point.

She dragged Loki out “Ladies and gentlemen!” It appeared that there was a crowd gathered, though Loki knew not how. Had Skurge called them? It seemed likely. Though he had been under a cloak of seidr.., then, he supposed, that Hela had been around Angrboda for 120 years and had no doubt taught _her_ things in return for bringing him back. Hela was much more powerful than he, so he wouldn't have been surprised if she had been able to dismantle his cloak. “This _traitor_ , this _would be king_ , The Scourge of Asgard, its _bane_ , the one who unleashed Surtr in the first place, is here to pay for his actions!” Cheering. “Now, how do we punish someone so villainous? Death? Death is impermanent, it isn’t good enough for him, I say sheer **_misery_**!” More cheering.

She flung Loki, who at this point was barely able to retain consciousness, into a rock, where he hit his head against it. He couldn’t move, it must have been more seidr. So much for dedicating 120 years of his life to become strong enough to beat this bitch. The Norns hadn’t warned him about this! Could it be that Hela’s power outstripped theirs? Or that they were deceiving him and secretly rooting for her. Both situations put Mödí at high risk.

And then he saw it, the procession. Two guards, each leading a person out. Sigyn and his son with her, the thin, spindly thing.

“Skurge!” Hela commanded.

“Yes, my lady,” he nodded, approaching the boy and unsheathing his sword. It seemed that Loki’s tongue could still work.

“No! I gave you a job when nobody else would, you rat! Don’t you touch him, he’s done no wrong! _No_!” Loki struggled in his delirium against his invisible bonds. Sigyn was pleading for her son’s life too. The poor boy just looked down, ready to accept his fate.

It was all over in a mess of red. Skurge made a clean swipe, and for a moment the skin still held together, but then the boy’s head simply slid clean off of his neck and Loki wailed. Skurge didn't stop there. Einherjer and other guards who had never particularly liked him joined in. They dismantled the boy and removed his innards. When Loki thought that the worst of it was over, they brought his entrails over to Loki, all smelly and covered in blood.

“I really think that you, you pestilent leech, really will enjoy this bit. It’s the more horrific things that turn you on, huh? Like eating your boyfriend’s heart and, now, being tied up for all eternity in your son’s entrails.”

The men placed physical bonds upon him and through some magic managed to find enough of the boy’s entrails to fasten him to the rock in a sitting position that he couldn’t really move much in.

"I saved the best for last,” Hela flicked her fingers, and an asp appeared above his head. Loki looked up and immediately it spat venom into his face. The venom burned, like 50 mol dm-3 sulphuric acid. Loki looked down, more venom hit him in droplets. People were cheering. He didn’t blame them, not with how long it had been since his last appearance in Asgard: who knew what lies Hela had spread, even with Valkyrie and Sigurd in charge of this place?

As the crowd dispersed, Loki could only look to Sigyn on the ground, laying left there by Hela, who clearly had no more use for her now. Not when Hela’s arch nemesis was bound and rendered useless. A mother had just lost her son, and Loki couldn’t help but feel a sharp tugging in his heart. Not just at Sigyn’s misery, nor at the fact that he was now covered in the entrails of a son he had never known, cheeks smeared in the boy’s blood, but at just how metaphorical this was. A mother had lost her son… _He_ was a mother… **_He_** had a son. He had **_three_** sons, all of whom the Norns seemed to think were important. How many of his other children were to have fates like this.

Eventually, Loki managed to fall asleep, exhaustion overtaking the pain of having acid drip on him. His magic was bound, as was he, so where was the point in staying awake? It was only when he felt a change that he woke. No longer was acid falling down on him. He looked up. There was a saucer there, but-

_Sigyn_. Sigyn stood there, her arms outstretched, holding a saucer over his head, cheeks drenched and eyes puffy.

“His-his name was Narfi.” She said, her voice soft and timid, and Loki had to wonder to himself if she’d made her peace with losing her baby boy years ago.

“How-how long?”

“Since you left. After that rape, I was pregnant. It was yours, somehow I always knew that it was yours. Hela wanted-she wanted me… she wanted _us_ as leverage against you,” Sigyn broke down sobbing again, and Loki longed to run a hand through her brown hair and hold her and comfort her, but he couldn’t. Not trapped as he was.

“When I get out of here, I will kill her, and I **_will_** bring back our son.”

Sigyn chuckled miserably. “That I am sure you will, Loki-prince, that I am sure you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki spent 120 years doing those challenges and came back stronger than he's ever been, but still not strong enough to fight Hela. She binds him in his son's (who he didn't know he had), Narfi's, entrails and Loki and Sigyn are together again! :) Loki vows to bring Narfi back.


End file.
